


The Insidious Mind

by HastaLux



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe- Lovecraft, Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Body Horror, Established Poe Dameron/Finn, Evil Snoke, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Lovecraftian, M/M, Magic, Minor Character Death, Multi, Violence, mostly plot, some smut, the force exists
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-15 08:16:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13609287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HastaLux/pseuds/HastaLux
Summary: In the wake of World War One, an eldritch abomination rises to power in Arkham, Massachusetts. Armitage Hux has no thought of such creatures ever existing when he moves there, eager for a new start as a professor of engineering, but the creature has plans in mind for him... and he cannot help but feel drawn to the creature's pawn, the handsome and enigmatic sculptor Ben Solo.Poe Dameron and Finn Storm hunt monsters. They know there is something evil taking hold of Arkham, and they are there to kill it before it fully comes to power... assuming they can find it in time.Meanwhile, a lonely guardian trains an apprentice to take his place as a defender against the dark.





	1. Red and Black

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stating up front: This fic will lean Kylux, but there will also be a fair bit of Stormpilot that evolves into P/F/R. The Kylux will be Less Nice than the rest, Stormpilot will be moderately Nice. 
> 
> The arc is broadly taken from the sequel films, you'll spot the similarities if you squint. That includes Last Jedi, so be mindful. 
> 
> I make no promises for bang-on historical accuracy.
> 
> Okay? Okay. Good talk. See end for more notes.

Armitage Hux was growing very, very, decidedly, sick of water. It was funny, for a Navy man, that five days at sea made him want to tear out his hair from sheer boredom. He reads over the letter in his pocket for the ninth time. _Miskatonic University welcomes Armitage Hux to the position of Professor of Engineering._ He has an idea that American colleges are much wilder than the ones he has known in Britain, but all of their communications so far had been suitably formal. Besides, it would be doing something he enjoyed, far away from anyone who knew his surname.

His other hand shakes a bit, scattering the ash of his cigarette, and he glares at it until it calmed. His last reminder of the war, albeit not a battle. Just a misfired torpedo in testing. His father was unimpressed when he wrote to tell him of the injury, reminding him, as always, that if he wasn’t on the front lines he wasn’t really a soldier. He would have replied that Brendol hardly counted as a _real_ soldier either if that was his logic but the man saved him the trouble by dying before Armitage felt like responding. 

He puts out his cigarette as the other passengers wander onto the deck to catch sight of Boston. It wasn’t as dramatic as the New York landing, he’d been told, but it was a hell of a lot cheaper. He disembarks with two bags and a briefcase and sets to hailing a taxicab north to Arkham. It doesn’t take long, but it is evening by the time he arrives at the boarding house he’d secured lodging at. One of his few remaining Navy acquaintances had recommended it, said the landlady was a Brit herself, friendly to servicemen, and Armitage was picturing some manner of white-haired widow, all aflutter for a Navy man’s service. The driver helped haul his bags to the door, was tipped sufficiently for his trouble, and Armitage was saved from needing to knock by the exceedingly tall woman who opened the door. “Mr. Hux?” She looms in the doorway, a shadow over the porch. “I’ve been expecting you. Come in to the drawing room. I’ll get the kettle on.” 

“Ms. Phasma?” She nods. He hides his surprise by bending down to lift his bags. She is far younger than he would have expected, not to mention the alarm of having to look _up_ to a woman. She has perfect posture to boot, blonde hair bobbed off neatly… wait. He _had_ met a woman this tall before. “Hang on. Were you a Wren?” 

She glances back at him as she leads him into the drawing room. “I thought you looked familiar. _Vernon_ man?”

He nods, letting out a chuff of laughter. “Well that’s unexpected. Have you been here long?”

“Since we disbanded. Not very many positions for weapon analysts.”

“I’ve run into much the same myself,” Hux notes dryly. “Apparently it’s ill mannered to keep building bombs when we’re at peace.” 

She laughs softly, vanishing for a moment into the kitchen to start the kettle. “Depth charges, wasn’t it?” she asks as she glides back into the room. Her dress is simple, grey. It reminds him of the Wren uniform, now that he’s looking. “I remember them saying there was a very bright young man aiming to cause a lot of misery to U-boats in Taylor’s office.”

“I had some ideas in that vein, yes.” There is pride in his voice, and it is earned. The depth charge research team had created something entirely new, something devastating, and Hux was _integral_.

“Why leave, then?” 

His smile fades, and he finds himself fumbling in his pocket for his cigarette case. “Oh, you know. Differences of opinion. No room for advancement.” True, partially. Certain rumors regarding his preferred type of companion had begun to circulate not long after the war ended, and no matter how carefully Hux treaded they kept dogging him. Worse, they were true. Are true. They couldn’t be proven, of course, but that was only the difference between prison or ruin. It wouldn’t matter how well he could engineer a bomb if the other lads on the research team wouldn’t work with him, and without the Navy’s recommendation he’d struggled to find a decent position on any engineering firm in Britain. Phasma offers him a light. “Thought a change of pace might suit.”

“You’ve got one, then. Arkham’s an unusual town, Mr. Hux. There’s a lot of odd folk find their way here.” 

“As long as I can find some research to dig my teeth into, I’ll be pleased well enough.” 

Phasma brings out a piping hot proper English tea, which Hux finds himself exceedingly grateful for. “Sugar?”

“No thank you, I prefer it on the bitter side.” He just saves himself from spilling it as a tremendously loud crash echoes overhead, like someone has overturned a full wardrobe. Instead he ends up with a ring of tea in his saucer. “Good lord.”

Phasma doesn’t bat an eye. “Ah. That would be my other tenant. He falls into the aforementioned category of odd folk.”

“What on earth is he doing? Tearing out the wall?”

“Moving rock, I’d imagine. He’s a sculptor of some sort. Metal, stone, all sorts of things. We have a standing agreement that he doesn’t make excessive noise after eleven, but otherwise I don’t mind the racket. I hope that won’t be a problem.”

“Oh. No, if he works mostly during the day I’ll be at the university anyway, so it won’t bother me at all.” Hux stares up at the ceiling. Now that he’s listening for it he can make out the faint sounds of tapping and grinding. “Is he very successful?”

“I’ve really no idea. He pays for his room, that’s all I care about.”

“Hmph.” Hux supposes living with an artistic sort wouldn’t be worst idea. It could be a nice change of pace from barracks and routine and angry glares in the shower-

“Biscuit?”

“Mm? Yes, please, thank you Ms. Phasma.”

“Just call me Phasma. Everyone does.”

Hux smiled. “Phasma, then. No one really calls me Armitage, but Hux is fine.”

They chat until it is quite dark under the glow of Phasma’s gas lamps. Arkham was only starting to get electric lighting, the university and some of the wealthier districts had it so far, and it was only a matter of time before they were all switched over. But Hux was growing more than reasonably tired and to save him the embarrassment of nodding off while she is talking Phasma leads him up to his room. It’s spartan, just a bed, a desk, and a set of drawers, but that was what he was used to. “Let me know if you need another blanket. My room’s downstairs. Your washroom’s at the end of the hall. I usually eat breakfast early, but they’ll be bread and a bit of cheese out if you’re not awake.”

“That won’t be a problem. I’m an early riser.” 

Hux considers, as he unpacked his few possessions, that it was not some much that he awoke early as that he never really slept. But that might change here, away from… everything else that had come from living and working on the _Vernon_. 

He slips into his pajamas and crawls into bed. He could still hear a faint sort of tapping from across the hall. The other tenant was still working. Perhaps he was a night owl. That wasn’t so bad, there was a steadiness to it that made Hux’s mind quiet and restful….

Some hours later his eyes snap awake. He blinks out the window. The moon had shifted, he would guess it was 2 or 3 in the morning. He has a lingering uneasy feeling that he can’t quite place, like he’s woken from a bad dream. Except he couldn’t recall dreaming anything. Perhaps there had been a noise? He sighs and sits up. He could never really fall back asleep after waking up, so he might as well go have another cigarette. Outside, maybe, see what the Massachusetts night air was like. 

He shrugs on a robe and opens his door just as the door across the way opens The moon lights the other room through the open doors, a beam of pale silver-blue meeting something red beyond, but, more importantly, a sweat-slicked, shirtless, Byronic prince of a specimen that was looking at him under a crown of dark hair. Hux’s mind stopped working entirely for about five full seconds before a coherent thought comes through ( _Good lord that’s unfair_ ) and another follows ( _Christ, is everyone here taller than I am?_ ) He blushes involuntarily and hopes it’s dark enough to be hidden. “You’re the sculptor?” he asks softly, not wanting to wake Phasma. Unfortunately it means he can’t quite drown out the sound of his own heart picking up pace in his ears. “I’m Hux.”

“Nice to meet you, Hux. I’m Ben.” He holds out a wide hand that Hux shakes, a firm grip that Hux tries his best to match ( _of course he has a firm grip you fool, he works with stone, get your head out of your trousers._ ) “Sorry for being so indecently dressed, I’m not used to seeing anyone up at this hour.”

“Quite alright.” Hux smiles and tries to stop himself from openly staring at Ben’s particularly indecent abdominals. “Er. Cigarette? I was just going to sit outside….”

“Sure.” Ben leans into his door frame and nods into his own room. “But we can use my balcony. Phasma tends to beat people about the head with broom handles if they startle her in the middle of the night.”

“Duly noted.” Hux pauses a moment, realizes Ben isn’t going to move entirely out of the way and in fact was expecting him to step through, and does so, _very pointedly ignoring_ the brush of his robe against the sculptor’s skin. Which wasn’t hard, after he gets a good glimpse of the room. He stopped short to stare at it. The stone in the center of the room is red, catching the moonlight in a way that makes it look like it’s glowing. There are scattered other pieces in corners: marble busts, polished granite, a sharp, spiky work of obsidian; but the red stone is more impressive than all of them, even mostly uncarved. 

“Do you like it?” Hux hadn’t felt how close Kylo came to his back, but the heat on his hair would’ve made him quiver if he had less self-control. He swallows.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. What’s the stone?”

“Kyber. It’s local. Bit of an Arkham oddity.” Ben passes around him and skims a hand over the rock. Hux would swear the light shifts within it, but it has to be a trick of the mineral. 

“What are you carving it into?” The other pieces in the room are fairly abstract, putting Hux in mind of a more violent Picasso. But the center stone is mostly unformed, only a few chunks have been knocked to the floor in a scattering of fat prisms. 

“I don’t know yet.” Hux arches a brow at him and Ben shrugs. “I tend to… feel it out as I go.”

Hux smiles thinly. He has never in his life ‘felt it out as he went’. He thrives on order and discipline. “Sounds intriguing. I don’t have the head for artistic endeavors, myself.” He forces himself to stop staring at the stone- the crystal?- and heads for the doors to the narrow balcony. His fingers draw a cigarette by muscle memory, he turns to offer one to Ben to find the taller man already there with a freshly lit match. “Oh. Thank you.” He does not focus on how close their hands are as he lights, and instead flicks his cigarette case open toward Ben. Ben’s hands are hard. Calloused. Oversized, in proportion to their owner. Hux fails to stop his mind from wondering what it would be like to exchange his cigarette for one of those fingers, tracing along his lips...

“What is it you do, Hux?” Ben draws out a cigarette and lights it, his eyes on Hux, all deep wells of interest. 

“I’m taking a teaching position at the local university. Miskatonic.”

“Ah. My uncle used to have a philosophy post there.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm.” Smoke puffs over Ben’s lip in a way that Hux is absolutely certain must be criminal. “Not anymore.” He lets out a low laugh, finding some private joke in this. “You ought to be careful. I hear the students there can be awfully monstrous.”

“True of students anywhere, isn’t it?”

Ben makes an inscrutable noise and takes a long drag. “What will you be teaching?”

“Engineering.”

“I should have guessed.”

Hux arches a brow. “Why’s that?”

“You’re all order. I could see it in your room through the door, nothing out of place.”

“I did only just unpack, how do you know I’m not actually extremely messy?”

“You aren’t.” Hux laughs at Ben’s conviction. “What? I can tell these things.”

“Artist’s intuition?” 

“Something like that.” He turns to face Hux, resting on the rail, studying him. Hux feels that this is what it must be like to be a painting in a museum. Scrutinized, yes, but also so very, very seen. “You were military as well, I’m guessing.”

“Are you an artist or a detective?” Ben reaches out and traces the line of Hux’s shoulder, down his arm. Hux holds his breath.

“Posture,” Ben says as his hand drops. 

Hux offers a thin smile, flicking ash away as he yet again tries to get his heart to slow down, reminds himself to breathe. They linger on the balcony until the cigarettes were embers, talking of nothing in particular. Hux would have another just to keep talking to Ben, but he shouldn’t. He must meet with the university staff tomorrow. Besides, letting himself… indulge… even just in speaking to Ben for hours… the laws were the same in the states as they were back home. _Nothing good can come of this._ So it must be, as it always has been, discipline over indulgence.

Ben closes the doors behind them when they step back within, and Hux cannot not stop his gaze lingering once more on the red crystalline stone in the center of the room. The kyber. Again, Ben moves more silently than he should, the suddenness of his breath on Hux’s neck sending a wave of electricity down his spine. “Would you like a piece?”

“Hm?” 

“Of the stone. You obviously like it.” Ben bends down and plucks a large shard the length of a his hand from the floor, still standing close enough that Hux is keenly aware of his warmth along his own back. “Here.”

Hux accepts it reverently. The light catches it as it passes into his hands, making it look like it has sparked just from contact with his skin. It feels… warm. Fascinating. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.” Ben smiles. “Take it into work with you. I’m told kyber has some interesting properties, from a geological perspective. Could be interesting for engineering too.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Hux offers a lukewarm smile and moves away from the heat of Ben’s body- _running away_ , his mind offers bitterly- toward the hall. “Good night, Ben.”

“Good night, Hux.” 

Closing his door feels like dragging sacks of flour across sand, but he manages. Hux lays back in now-cold sheets, willing his brain to quiet. He falls asleep to Ben’s name, whispered over and over in the recesses of his mind. 

***

Within the sanctuary of an old church, a dark haired man in priest’s collar has his head bowed by a table, studying an array of carved stones and several open books by candlelight, making notes from time to time in a thick leather-bound tome. He does not move when another figure enters through the shadows, though a flicker of a smile crosses his face.

“Bless me father, for I have sinned.”

Poe turns with a faux glare. “Finn, if you go into that confessional I’m going to have to assume you are only seeking _deeper_ sin.” Finn grins at Poe and waggles his brows. Poe rolls his eyes and turns back to his table. “That’s what I thought.”

Finn appears beside him, planting a kiss on his cheek. “You picked the outfit, you can’t fault me a bit of humor.”

Poe bites his bottom lip and gently shoves Finn by the shoulder into the first pew. “The position was open, and it is an excellent way to find out secrets.” 

“What if I have secrets you can find out?”

Poe sighs. “Incorrigible, you.”

“I prefer to think of myself as mildly corriged.” Finn leans back into the pew. “You didn’t come to bed.”

“Yes.” Poe frowns, glancing back over the runic table he had been working on, his latest casting scattered across the table nearby. He debates for a moment not telling Finn what is wrong, a vain attempt to keep the other man, his chosen partner, free from the same fears that occupy his own mind. But he cannot. They decided too long ago that there should be no secrets between them. “These signs are worrying me, Finn.” 

“Let me see.” Finn moves to stand behind Poe, a hand on his shoulder as Poe fans out the stones. The symbol in the center was the sign of the same threat that drew them to Arkham in the first place: something old, red, and ancient. When they first landed on Arkham as a point of interest it had been joined by a single black rune, representing the tie between the creature and this plane. Yet this time, when Poe cast the runes, there was a second black symbol. “Oh. There are… there are two of them?”

Poe rubs his forefinger against his temple. “So it seems. I just can’t work out what it means yet.” Ties to the earth were not just portals through which the creature could enter. They could be artifacts of great power, a tainted location, even a person. Finn’s fingers gently stroke the back of his neck and Poe rests his cheek against Finn’s hip. “This case doesn’t seem like the others.”

“No portal you can just blow up?”

“I like blowing up portals. I’m good at it.” Poe huffs, glaring at the array of materials before him. “If there is one here, it’s well hidden.”

“I’ll go over the coast again tomorrow, make sure it’s not in one of these sea caves I’ve heard about.” Finn slides his finger along Poe’s jawline and tilts his chin up. “But we can worry about it _tomorrow_. Come to bed.”

Poe runs a tongue over his teeth. Finn was particularly handsome when he was trying to be persuasive. “I wasn’t done with this chapter of research….”

“Yes, you were.” Finn hoists him easily and tosses Poe over his shoulder, swatting him on the ass as Poe laughs. “Bed.”

“You know, you really are not helping my cover story here, Finn. How do you expect me to be a chaste man of the lord with you sharing my bed every night?”

“I assure you I shall fly out the window in an instant if your parishioners call on you. Your reputation is, after all, a constant worry on my mind.” Poe swats Finn’s ass this time, balanced as he is on the taller man’s shoulder. Finn sets him down at the foot of the stairs, ensuring he keeps moving with both hands on his hips.

“Pushy.”

“You like it. Get in bed.”

Poe makes a face at him when they reach their room, which Finn responds to by sliding into the bed and pointedly folding down the sheets on Poe’s side. Poe sighs and begins to strip. He can still see Finn as he was when they first met, his dark Valkyrie in the middle of the woods driving off hellish, tentacled hounds with a rifle, and then, when he ran out of ammunition, his knife. Finn, speaking French at him while his world spun, dragging him all the way to a military hospital while Poe tried his best not to bleed out. And Finn, in his bed, beckoning. As he is now. Poe doesn’t bother putting on his pajamas, he’ll just be taking them off again in a moment. He dives between the sheets, pressing his lips hard against Finn’s. Finn rocks back a moment, surprised by Poe’s sudden fervor, but soon enough he’s right there with Poe, kissing him deeply, his hands running over Poe’s back and lower as Poe’s slip into his pajama pants. Poe is efficient, he needs this, if only to forget about the monsters of the world for a bit longer. He takes them both in hand and strokes until they are evenly spent, and Poe falls asleep without managing to find his pajamas, his head on Finn’s chest and the pattern of runes diminished, for the moment, to a dull roar at the back of his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: (history courtesy of Wikipedia and/or GoogleFu, I am not a historical scholar)
> 
> 1). Wren was common name for women in the WRNS, Women’s Royal Navy Service. Some of them did mundane stuff like cooking, some built parts or carried out repairs for mines and anti-aircraft guns. 
> 
> 2). The HMS Vernon was the name of the the stationary ship housing the Royal Navy’s Torpedo Branch, alongside other nearby vessels designated as workshops or practical testing sites, all connected by bridges. During WW1 they carried out extensive torpedo testing, trained Navy recruits, and carried out research in anti-submarine devices, electrics, and mines.
> 
> 3). Hux’s worries about period-typical homophobia due to his experiences in Britain aside, this fic isn’t going to lean too hard into that (nor into racism, nor misogyny) because my iteration of “Arkham is odd” is that people there are more chill about letting people live their own lives due to the amount of monstrous nonsense they see on a regular basis. But there will be mentions of various period-typical crap occurring.
> 
> 4). Re: Minor character death, violence, etc- listen, this is Lovecraft. Eldritch creatures are vicious. People are going to die. I am not planning to kill anyone in our major relationship groupings (that’d be Kylux and Stormpilot), but anyone who has died (or presumably died offscreen) in the films is a likelier option. Tread carefully. 
> 
> 5). Comments give me life. Feel free to comment, ask questions, whatever. :)


	2. Mind Tricks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux investigates the properties of the kyber and finds himself drawn to Ben's room once again. Poe makes a rash decision. Ben manages the pieces in play as well as his own place on the board.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some violence in this one. Hux also manages to gaslight himself as well as be gaslit.

The Miskatonic University campus was… acceptable, Hux thought as he was given the tour around. Classrooms, labs, and the like, fairly generic save the larger than usual amount of odd antiquities on the walls, especially near the offices of the anthropology department. His own offices were spartan, but adjacent to the engineering laboratory, which was preferable. He’d also been introduced to his student assistants, two over-eager wispy young men named Thanisson and Mitaka, one frowning one called Rodinon, and a battleaxe of a woman called Unamo who had made her way into the engineering division by sheer force of will despite the university’s semi-official policy not to admit women to their more “rigorous” divisions. 

So he sits in his new office, drafting a curricular plan, trying to convince himself that education will be just as interesting as research. His pen taps against the desk. His eyes keep finding the piece of kyber glinting out of his satchel. He doesn’t remember putting it there, but he must have in the morning. Tap tap. _Glint_. Tap tap. _Glint._

Eventually he sighs and sets the paperwork aside, drawing the piece of crystal out of the bag, Ben’s words in his head. “Interesting properties, hm?” He wanders into the laboratory, runs it through the standard analysis. He can feel the eyes of the students on him as they do their own research, curious what their professor is up to. After a while Thanisson starts lurking nearby, discreetly taking notes. Hux feels a quiet note of pride that his most senior students are already so interested. He smiles when he gets to conductivity. That sort of work had been part of his focus on the _Vernon_ , but in a basic test it was child’s play. He sets up the test wires, a meter to read the results, a large battery, and places the crystal shard to complete the circuit.

When he flips the switch, there is a burst of light, a tendril of lightning jolts forward and flies into Thanisson, sending him reeling into the nearest table and then into a heap below it. Hux utters a curse and flips the machine off before he runs to check on Thanisson. “Still with us, son?”

“Yes sir…” he wheezes as he rights himself. “Just… surprised… is all….”

“Sit up slow. There’s a good lad. Mitaka?” Hux assumes Mitaka is the most likely of the others in the room to have something resembling a maternal instinct, and the dark-haired young man scurries over. “Will you take him to the medical school to be looked over? Thanks much.”

He can feel Rodinon and Unamo eyeing him as he puts the testing elements away. Perhaps not the best impression, to electrocute one’s students on the first day. He creeps back off into his office and shuts the door, setting the shard of kyber on his desk. So. Conductive. No. He flips back through his notes. Not just conductive. It had to _produce_ electricity on its own to create an effect like that. Massive amounts of electricity. Which… shouldn’t be possible. Though, if it _were_ possible… Hux idly begins to sketch an outline of one of his depth charge concepts, substituting out some of the core components for kyber. The yield could be enormous. He must ask Ben where on earth he found this sample. The things he could do with a piece the size of the one Ben was carving…

Hux found the idea of the kyber eating away at his thoughts until he went back to the boarding house for supper. Phasma made soup. Hux peppered her with questions about her experience with ballistics, and then whether she was familiar with where the kyber came from. She was not. Ben didn’t join them. 

He ended up pacing in the hallway outside of Ben’s workroom. Would it send the wrong message to knock? No, this was business. He must put aside any other thoughts and keep it to business alone. 

But nobody answered when he knocked, so he lay on his bed, eyes on the ceiling, letting his mind run as he twirled the crystal between his hands. He is halfway through a mental sketch of an idea to use the kyber to power an entire electrical grid when sleep finally overtakes him.

***

Poe Dameron has not had many priestly duties to attend to this day, not that he actually knows what he’s meant to be doing with them other than talking to people and coming up with sermons to read when he has to do a better job of his impersonation on Sundays. Apparently Arkham is not the most religious town, but that suits him fine. He has gone back to his books, spread out several across the altar while Finn is off looking for signs in the places this sort of horror usually likes to lurk- caves; shadowy, accursed ruins; and dark water, mostly. He is flipping through a tome on known conduits for creatures when he lands on an image of a red stone, a man sketched inside of it, screaming. “Kyber may be used to bind as well as to amplify…” Kyber. He’s heard the term before. He pulls out his own notebook and looks through his own scratchy handwriting, jotted down after speaking to any parishioners that came in. “Children lost in an implosion of a kyber vein near the Skywalker estate….” That’s right, there was some sort of accident several years back. He had newspaper clippings somewhere from their research on the town itself. “Highly volatile… explosion looked like lightning and fire erupting at the same time.” That was odd for rocks, right? It occurs to Poe that he might have had an easier time if he had paid slightly better attention in his science courses. 

He taps his foot against the table leg. Finn would be back soon. He should wait, report. Plan.

Then again, impulse control was never really his strong suit.

Poe tidies up his archaic tomes from the altar and jogs down into the basement of the church. He had laid out several protective charms down here when they arrived, the sort of thing that worked best in the foundations of a building to deter negative energy and the prying eyes of cultists, should this creature have any. They should give him some protection for what he was about to try, a maneuver Finn would certainly call “poking the bear” followed by “extremely foolish.” But Poe hadn’t gotten into the business of slaying eldritch horrors by making safe decisions. 

He gets out a bit of white chalk and begins to draw along the stone floor. Binding, he could do. Magic is an iffy part of their trade, but Poe has a bit of an affinity for it, and it works a hell of a lot better than bullets on most creatures. He sketches out a wide circle patterned with runes and places a basin of holy water in it. If the creature was weak, he could catch it right here, send it back to whatever hellscape it spawned from. If it was a bit more potent, it should be enough to let him see what he’s up against without the creature spying _him_. But, if it is a strong _thing_ , then it might be aware of him. It might provide enough bait to lure it out, away from the kyber that it must be using as some sort of power source. Then he can lure it here and catch it. Kill it. Whatever way it goes Poe is sure he has the upper hand, because he is Poe Dameron, and he is _exceptionally good_ at killing monsters. 

He creates a second circle, a safe place for himself, an added layer of protection just in case. There hadn’t been a creature yet that could get through _both_ circles. He sits there, cross-legged, book open in his lap, and begins to read an incantation in Latin. The walls shudder, a gentle cloud of dust puffing into the room. He continues. The basin of holy water burbles, boils. A gust of wind passes through the room bearing a scent like burned flesh. He finishes reading. 

Nothing is in the other circle.

Poe frowns. Had he made an error on one of the runes? Surely not. He’d done this a hundred times, flawlessly, thank you very much. He turns his attention to the book. Maybe something about the incantation was off, or the kyber interfered with its transmission. 

He isn’t looking when the water in the basin turns black, like someone has filled it with ink. And it grows, filling and filling, until the water overflows and spills its darkness across the floor.

Then he looks up. “What in the hell….”

An inky, black hand reaches out of the basin, claws at the ground, and pulls as a greater form emerges behind it. Lank, dark hair, red eyes staring. Right at him. “Shit,” Poe breathes. He stands within his protective circle, drawing a dagger engraved with all manner of ‘death-to-evil’ spells. Finn was definitely going to kill him. But he should be safe as long as he stays in the circle. 

The creature is enormous. Man-shaped, but that’s likely just a ruse. He’s shocked when it stands fully at how tall it is, how broad. It walks out of the binding circle, leaving wet, black steps in its wake. It strides toward him, tilts its head as it reaches the edge of his circle. “That’s right, you can’t get in here!” Poe taunts. The inky abyss hooks open in the place where the creature’s mouth should be. When it drives its arm through he can hear the scream of steam coming off it, like the water-flesh it wears is trapped in a boiling kettle. 

Poe dives out of the back of the circle and runs for the stairs. He is nearly there when something wraps his ankle and yanks, dropping him sharply to the floor where his head smacks off the edge of the stair. Everything in his vision turns to stars. He’s fairly certain he’s bleeding, but he’s too dazed to do anything about it as the creature looms over him. He has the impression that it’s sniffing him.

“Hey… hey….” He doesn’t know why he’s trying to reason with it, but there is something human about it. And unlike others he’s dealt with, it is subtle. As far as he can tell it hasn’t rampaged through the town killing people yet. “You don’t have to do this. I just want to talk.”

“Liar,” it snarls at him. “You drew a binding circle.”

Poe isn’t sure if he is more surprised that the creature can recognize a binding circle, or that it can speak. It picks up his ankle again, dragging him toward the basin. He feels steadily more damp the closer they get. It’s as if there was not just a basin but a complete pool… a deep pool, he realizes as he feels his legs submerge into the black water. He starts to scramble, looking for anything to grab onto. “Hey. Hey! Don’t- don’t you dare- don’t!” Poe just manages to get a breath in before he is pulled under entirely, down into the watery abyss.

In the basement the basin rocks from side to side as the water retreats back into it, leaving few traces of either man or creature in its wake.

***

Hux dreams of red crystals.

He can see the whole perfection of it. A perfect sphere. A weapon. _The_ weapon, the greatest thing mankind has ever known. _Beautiful_ , and full of power. So much raw power. In his dream he knows he can have it all, if he can just get close enough to see how it works….

His own shuddering wakes him up, gasping, angry. If he’d only had more time, he was sure he would have some sort of insight. A world-breaking insight. 

Then again, it was only a dream.

He falls back into the dampness of his own sweat. The shard Ben had given him tantalized him, glowing in the moonlight, just begging him to try _more_. More experiments. More _power_. There was no way he could sleep like this, so… agitated. He needs a cigarette. Maybe Ben… but no, it was Ben’s fault the kyber was all he could think about. Sitting over there with such a huge mass of it, for _art_ , of all things, not even a practical usage. Hux could do _so much more_ with it. 

He drags himself out of bed with a grumble and finds his robe. The fabric is cold against his skin. He shivers and debates the merits of facing Phasma’s reputed broom beating against knocking on Ben’s door. The latter just screams of inviting trouble, but… Hux is a master of self-control. He’ll just get another look at the kyber, ask for a few more shards, where Ben got it from… and he won’t think at all about how handsome Ben looks in moonlight.

Right.

He opens his door quietly and peeks across the hall. 

Ben’s door is ajar. There’s water on the ground, dark and murky over the wood floor. Hux’s eyes flicker to the washroom, but there’s no water there, no overflowing tub. Maybe not water. Blood? “Ben?” he ventures cautiously. There is a sound from within, something dragging. A muffled sort of groan. A thud. “Ben? Everything alright?” He nudges the door open with one finger. Maybe he was wrong, maybe it was something more like mud than water, thick and viscous, tracked along the floor all around the crystal. Ben’s been shaping it, he realizes, it has gained curves in the shape of a distorted face, broken in the middle like it’s been hit with an axe. It made him feel… uneasy, but it also called to him. He was standing in front of it with his fingers pressed against it before he knew what he was doing, only jolted out of his communion with the stone by the sound of a door closing in Ben’s bedroom. He jerked backwards. “Ben?”

The tall man peers through the door between the bedroom and his studio, pulling up his trousers as though he’d just got them on. Of course he hasn’t got a shirt on. Hux is beginning to doubt whether he even owns one. He purses his lips. Irritation has always been easier for him than attraction. Ben raises a brow at him. “Hux. I didn’t take you for an opponent of knocking.”

“Your door was open,” Hux says with indignation, “and there was…” he glances down to gesture at the patches of fluid, but there aren’t there. Just bare wood, and scattered patches of red dust. “...water on the floor….” He glares at the floor like he expects an apology for its change. 

“Water? You sure you aren’t still asleep?” Ben grins at him, lopsided, but it doesn’t mitigate Hux’s frown. Nor the feeling that the world is shifting around him and has failed to tell him of the change. “Did you come over for a smoke? You can use the balcony, even if I’m asleep it won’t wake me up.”

“Yes- No, not just that.” Hux shakes his head, trying to dislodge the feeling that the room itself is lying to him. Water that wasn’t there… he just had to put it aside. _Focus, damnit_. Anyone could mistake a reflection in the night, just like the sculpture that seemed to be pulsing at him now had to be a trick of the moon. It must have been dust, not water. The kyber dust. Right. He was here for the kyber. “Yes, I was going to have a cigarette, but also- might I have any of your other scraps of kyber? I performed some tests on the shard you gave me and the results were… very intriguing.”

Ben smiles, far too amused for Hux’s taste. “You like it.”

“Do you know what it can do?” Hux lets himself feel the anger of such valuable material being used for _sculpture_ , Ben’s idiotically handsome face be damned. “Do you? The things it could spark, the power it could wield, it’s….”

“Everything.” Ben is closing the gap between them and Hux straightens, willing himself into his best military posture. It’s his protection, a show of strength against the things Ben coming so close makes him feel. “You can have the shards.” He presses past Hux, nudging into his shoulder as he passes. Jostling him. _Childish._

“Will you show me where you found it?”

“Of course.” Hux can feel him _lurking_ behind, so Hux turns around. Ben is _just_ shy of touching him, his chest a hair separate, his lips an inch away from Hux’s cheek. All of Hux’s internal warnings suddenly blare loudly, telling him to run. _Too close, too dangerous, you’ll be arrested, just go, go right now, you’re fine on your own, you’ll always be fine on your own._ Hux lifts his hands to the space between them, ready to push and run. Ben just smiles. There’s red in his eyes that must be a reflection of the kyber. “Was there anything _else_ you wanted to ask me?”

_Say no. SAY NO. Back to your room you daft fool_ \- Hux cannot get his mouth to form words. He manages a single noise in the back of his throat. Was that a whimper? Did he actually _whimper?_ He was going to have very stern words with himself about this violation in discipline as soon as he parsed how his hands had managed to get on Ben’s hips and _oh no. Oh no._ His eyes slide down to his traitorous hands- good lord, everything is betraying him today, even his... Hux swallows. His pajama pants do absolutely nothing to restrain the growing bulge. Only the robe might save his dignity. 

His eyes slide back up and he hopes, again, that if he’s blushing it’s too dark to see it. But then his eyes meet Ben’s and he feels as though he can see galaxies in the red-tinted abyss that is his pupils. Ben slides his hand along the break in Hux’s robe, up and up until he reaches Hux’s throat, traces a finger under his chin. Hux is making the same damn breathy whimpering sound, high in his throat. “I thought so,” Ben says, pressing against him, kissing Hux gently, tenderly. 

It’s so different from anything else Hux has experienced. His past liaisons were rushed, furtive, and if there was kissing at all it was of the rough and desperate sort. He has no idea what to do with gentleness. He lets his own hands wander behind Ben’s back, drawing him closer. His urge to flee quiets. He has a moment of surprise when Ben’s tongue pierces his lips, but it is a good sort of surprise. He reciprocates in kind.

They shift. Ben’s leg comes between his own, brushes against the base of his cock. It has been so long that Hux moans from even the barest contact. He can feel Ben rising for him, thick and straining, pressed against his hip. Hux traces the flesh just above Ben’s pants, flicking just within the scarcest amount. Toying with the danger desire had always posed for him. Ben’s hand strokes the curve of Hux’s waist, follows the vee down, hooks a finger into the waist of his pants…

A crashing noise from the direction of Ben’s bedroom makes Hux jerk away. Ben lets out an irritated growl. His eyes flash rage, but when he glances at Hux he smiles quickly. “I bet that damn cat got in again. Sorry- just one minute. Stay right here.”

“Cat?” Hux feels suddenly bereft, and in the absence of Ben his heart changes beat. The fear rears its head, his father’s voice reminding him that if this ruins him it will all be his own fault….

“Phasma’s got a ratter. Fierce little thing. She can move through walls, I swear.” Ben vanishes into the dark of his bedroom. Hux can hear a door opening, the sound of some heavy impact that must be Ben kicking a wall, followed by low words he can’t make out but he can tell are threatening. _Must be a tough cat._ He turns, stares at the crystal which still seems to be pulsing with the shifting moonlight. _What about your research?_ It seems to whisper at him. The kyber is what he needs. Not Ben. Just the kyber. He picks up the closest large shard from the floor. That’s right. So much to study. _Best get to it._ He is out the door before he even knows what he is doing, back to his room with the door closed, locked, relieved that he got out before he went too far. Before he did something ruinous. Only then does a voice Hux knows to be his own pipe up.

_Coward._

He can hear the heavy steps when Ben crosses the hall, a creak as he places a hand on Hux’s door. “Hux?” Hux says nothing, only puts his head in his hands. What the hell is the matter with him? Risking his new post on the same day he starts it. _Idiot. Fool._ “You don’t have to be afraid, Hux.” Ben waits. “Meet me by the bay tomorrow. I’ll show you where I found my kyber.” That makes Hux’s head lift. The kyber felt like a safer subject. And in public to boot. 

“Alright,” he murmurs.

“Good.” Ben’s footsteps retreat across the hall and Hux lays down, not expecting to sleep. Just trying to breath. But he can’t get his cock to stand down, so he brings himself off, hating that he can only see Ben’s face, feel the phantom touch where his hands had been. 

When he finally manages something like sleep he dreams he’s trapped in kyber, screaming to be let out. No one comes to save him.

***

Ben closes the door to his room and rolls his neck, glaring at the crystal, which is pulsing and emitting a low hum. Snoke, it calls itself, but Ben has never believed that is its real name. He does not normally challenge it too fiercely, but he is furious and frustratingly still erect, though that is waning. “You interfered,” he says to it accusingly. It doesn’t respond out loud, but he can understand it all the same. 

_You distract him._

“You’re _rushing_ him. He can do the job without your prodding. He could have stayed-” 

_He has an integral task. He cannot lose focus._

Ben stares at it, folds his arms. “He does his work at the university, it needn’t be his focus here.”

_Don’t question me, boy. I made you what you are._

Ben growls in frustration. “Is it me you don’t trust? Well how about I just stop carving, then-”

He is suddenly thrown to the floor, wheezing for breath as his body shifts, places once flesh melting into abyssal darkness, neither fluid nor void. The Sithen, Snoke called it, when he first offered it to Ben as a source of immense power. Ben hadn’t realized at the time how many strings this power came with, and all of them traced back to Snoke. _Do not. Question. Me._ Ben is fully pinned, his throat feels like there is a hand around it and he can feel invisible talons raking across his mind. He cries out, panting when they finally retract. _You will finish the carving, and you will be sure the engineer completes his task. We are nearly there._

He looks up with red eyes, choking on his words. “Of- of course- master- it- it will be done.”

He is released and left to cough, parts of him receding back to flesh, others not. The statue falls silent. He rises, furious, and storms back to his bedroom, tossing open the door to his closet where there is a far easier target for his anger. The faux-priest glares back at him, bruised and freshly bloodied from the kick he had taken across the face for knocking over the trunk in Ben’s closet and giving Hux the time to flee. He was still smugly defiant, even gagged and bound. Ben crouches on his level, meets his eyes. “You think you’ve had a victory, don’t you.” He reaches out a hand- not so much a hand at the moment, but close enough- and taps the gag. “Scream and I’ll rip out your tongue.” He waits until the small man nods before he removes the gag. 

“He got away, didn’t he?” Ben narrows his eyes. Poe- he had picked up the name from the man’s panicked thoughts when he first dragged him here- gives him a vicious grin. “Good. One more to escape your kind.”

“Is that how it seemed to you?” Ben backhands him with no preamble, watches him fall into the wall. “He’s already mine. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

“Not yours.” Poe turns, smirking. The smirk was permanent, it would seem, it could not be removed even by force. “I heard you. You have a master, and he’s got your _friend_ wrapped around his finger, not yours.” 

Ben is growing certain that this man must enjoy being hit. No one else would have such an uncontrollable mouth. 

So he doesn’t hit him. He leans in close, lets a thread of inky darkness extend from his hand to Poe’s temple. “Tell me. How much do you know of us?” He searches, probing. Poe is panting, but Ben doesn’t need him to speak for this. He sees flashes of the church, the runes- hardly anything at all really, more luck than anything else- and… “You have a partner.” He feels Poe immediately try to jerk away, that protective instinct a more obvious tell than anything else. “And where is he, pray tell?” He knocks his way past the flimsy mental barricades Poe tries to erect and sees water. Caves. The church. A bed. “Mmm. Well.” He shoves the gag back in and rises. “You ruined my chance for a romantic evening. Maybe I’ll make sure you don’t have one ever again.” 

He closes the closet door to the sound of Poe’s muffled screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The author offers apologies to Poe Dameron's poor face. And for Snoke being a cockblocking asshole. 
> 
> Comments welcome!


	3. Kylo Ren

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben is a very busy boy, but not all of his plans are going the way he would like. Some, however, are going very well indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you only here for one side of the fandom or the other, this chapter is entirely Ben/Hux POV. There is also smut! Yay, smut.

Hux has to teach and his hand will not stop shaking. He tries glaring at it, smoking about it, and finally he stuffs it in his pocket where it will be less visible. When it gets like this the damn thing _hurts_ , but he can manage pain. He’s always been able to manage pain.

He makes it through the first class on the strength of willpower, an excessively high pain tolerance, and tea. Later, he hears Mitaka assuring a nervous looking first-year that Professor Hux is not actually that terrifying, just “very British.” For the second course he leans a bit harder into “terrifying” and finds it almost enjoyable to watch them quake in fear of error. The students are terribly eager, falling over each other to be the first to answer questions- apparently some of them find his credentials fairly impressive- save one girl in the back who watches him with a sort of very direct gaze he finds slightly unnerving. She isn’t on the student list, and she’s gone before he has a chance to find her after the class and ask her who she is. Inquiries with the older students on that point do not reveal anything of use, though apparently it is not uncommon for incoming students to audit a course. He sets the curiosity aside when he returns to his office, however, for there awaits the kyber, and he has no afternoon courses today. 

The design is calling to him. He’d started it in the morning, a loose sketch of a possible housing for kyber. A bomb, if he’s being honest, though he isn’t quite sure what the yield would be. What happens when you rupture pure power? He tries to run through the science of it, filling a blackboard in his office with equations, algorithms, some of which he erases out of frustration and rewrites until they satisfy him. On the side, he finds himself drawing the sphere from his dream. It would work just as well as the housing, he realizes. And if he doesn’t mean to simply explode the crystal... he sketches in a single opening, one single outlet for the immense power inside. A targeted blast. It is an exciting idea, likely more powerful than any cannon he has seen. He works on in for the entire afternoon, purely focused on this one task. His hand doesn’t shake once.

He’s begun listing out the components he would need, sketching down to small sections of the interior, when he is interrupted by a knock at the door. “Yes?”

Mitaka peers in. “Thought I’d let you know it’s nearly six, sir. I’m the last one to leave.” 

Hux glances out the window. The sun is far lower than he was expecting- he must have been working for several hours longer than he anticipated, including accidentally foregoing lunch. His first instinct is to stay and continue working, but then he remembers Ben promised to show him more kyber… which must be worth the danger of associating with him, even if it is so late that he won’t have time for supper beforehand. He just needs to watch himself, not feel as he wants to feel. Hux can do that. Probably.

He nods. “Thank you, Mitaka, I’ve been immersed. Have a good evening.”

“You too sir.”

***

Ben spends his morning dealing with Poe. He’s let the hunter scream himself hoarse all night, muffled by thick walls and a gag. Ben can still hear him, though, and it brings him a smile as he spends the rest of the night sculpting the kyber. He can almost see Snoke now. When dawn light breaks through his windows, he closes his drapes. The Sithen makes him favor the dark. While he can stand the full light of day it hurts his eyes, and the Sithen itself doesn’t like it. It is far more potent in darkness. Or at least inside, in the shadows. 

He opens up the closet and looks over Poe. The hunter has worn himself out, and now in addition to all his bruises he looks ragged. Tired. Ben smiles. “I’m going to see your friend today. I’m very much looking forward to meeting him. Finn, right? I’m thinking I ought to console him about you first, see if he lives up to what you think of him.” Ben licks his lip to make it clear exactly what he means by “console.”

He isn’t expecting it when Poe leaps at him, the restraints falling beside him. Poe spits out the gag. Something metallic smacks into Ben’s forehead and carves down across his cheek. It _hurts_. The little hunter is strong. But he is _nothing_ against the Sithen. Ben lets himself feel the pain, feel the anger, his eyes closed as he blindly fends off Poe’s improvised weapon. 

When he opens them again the world goes grey. His eyes have tinted black, he knows, he can tell from Poe’s disgusted expression. His blood along the line in his face thickens and darkens until the cut is just a remnant of black scarring. Poe goes for his throat, pressing in with the metal and a bit of leather. _One of the ties from the trunk._ Ben should have known better than to leave him with anything at all, but he had been forced to improvise when Hux came over. He won’t make that mistake again. 

The Sithen lifts out of him and snatches Poe’s wrists, then tosses him across the room and into the wall with a sickening crunch. Ben can feel pleasure radiating out of the crystal in his workroom. Snoke is watching. 

Ben rises slowly and rolls his neck, hearing it pop. Poe is moaning on the floor, clutching his arm, so he doesn’t need to rush. He extends a tendril of Sithen to his workroom and it returns with a long coil of rope. In the fullness of the Sithen he can see so much more- Dameron’s thoughts radiate to him. Pain, desperation. Anger. He’ll try to escape again, no matter how wounded he is. There is no instinct in him that would allow him to give in. Ben can respect that. In another life he thinks they would probably have gotten on. But no longer. He sighs. He doesn’t need Poe as bait for the other hunter. He may as well just kill him now. 

_Restrain him,_ he feels Snoke say in his mind. _There is a purpose he can yet serve._

Ben doesn’t spare the kyber a glance. Arguing with Snoke has never gone well for him, and besides, in his mental commune with the monstrosity contained within he can sense something of Snoke’s plan. It brings a vicious quirk to his lip. He tests the tension of the rope and marches toward Poe. The man’s arm is at minimum dislocated from his impact against the wall. It might be broken. Ben admittedly doesn’t particularly care which it is. “Stay still or I’ll break the other one,” he says bluntly, tying the rope first at Poe’s ankles. 

After he has Poe suitably restrained- and by much stricter means than previously- he hoists him over his shoulder and walks down the stairs, wrapping his legs in the Sithen so his steps remain quiet. Phasma is in the kitchen, but she doesn’t hear him, which is good. The last time she encountered his work he had to bring her before Snoke to have the memories removed. He was fond of her, he didn’t like seeing her in that much pain. 

There is a storage room in the basement that no one uses, stone-walled and well insulated from its time as a coal cellar. Phasma has let Ben store large stones there before he is ready to work on them. Right now it is empty and perfect to store one wayward, injured hunter. Ben leaves him there, tied and hanging from the ceiling mostly from his good arm, though the injured one is pinned beside it. The gag is held in by a firmly tied belt this time. “Don’t go anywhere,” Ben quips as he closes the door and locks it. 

He spends a portion of his day quietly wandering the town in search of the other hunter. Finn. There are signs of him at the church, but the man himself isn’t there. The hunter paraphernalia has been cleaned up, however, to a locked trunk in the priest’s room. Ben snaps the lock off easily and reads through their notes. They really are woefully uninformed about Arkham, but he can see where the confidence comes from. They’ve stalked creatures across Europe and the states and killed nearly all of them. Yet they have never encountered the Sithen. They’re in over their heads. 

A map of Arkham falls from the notebook, heavily annotated in two hands. He closes his eyes and lets a finger trace the paper with the power of the Sithen behind it, searching. When he opens them he notes the point where it lands and smiles. “Perfect.”

In the afternoon he makes a brief trip to acquire a length of chain and a small bit of scrap metal. He must deal with Poe, and rope isn’t doing it. He slips into the cellar with a bucket, a battered pitcher of water, and a bit of stale bread, smiling broadly as he lets Poe down and removes the gag. The hunter’s broken arm is swollen and he can tell Poe is in serious pain, much weaker than he had been in the morning. “Lunch, hunter.” Poe glares at him. “Eat, or don’t. I don’t really care. But if you can’t follow orders the gag is going back in when I leave, so choose wisely.”

Poe begrudgingly eats. Ben watches him as he changes out rope for chain, seeing as he can’t keep him tied up and hanging overnight, not if they intend to make use of him later. He runs it around an old metal loop in the back wall. The bucket goes beside it, for sanitary purposes. Ben stares him down while he casually bends the scrap metal into the shape of a manacle. Poe finishes eating. “Good. Now if you can come here and accept this willingly, you get to keep the water.” He can tell Poe debates the merits of further resistance, but he comes to the chain all the same. “Very good.” Ben attaches him to the wall by his good wrist and puts the pitcher where he can reach it. “Behave, and you get to keep water and the ability to sit down. If I hear you, or you make any sort of trouble, you lose both. Understand?” Poe nods. “Good.” 

Ben locks him back in, rolls a spare rug in front of the door for added insurance, and sneaks back upstairs to ready himself for his evening stroll. Hux is later than he expects, but he hears footsteps on the stairs about half-past six. Ben almost leaps out the door, but he holds himself back. He shouldn’t let himself look so desperate, not when Hux is already so skittish around him. He waits at the door, hand and forehead pressed to the wood, listening to the rustle of Armitage moving about across the hall. He counts to sixty before he opens the door and leans out. “Hux? You’ve got walking shoes, or boots, right? Terrain out there isn’t great.” He hears a pause, feels the sudden burst of nerves in Hux radiate against the keener senses granted him by the Sithen. Normally he tries to suppress the Sithen when he interacts with more mundane folk, as when he has lost control of it the results have been… somewhat terrifying. But he can’t let his guard down again, not when even an injured hunter managed to surprise him. 

Hux’s door opens and the man steps out wearing a remarkably British outfit, down to the Wellington boots on his feet. It hadn’t occurred to him until just now that he’d really only seen Hux in his pajamas, but the closely fitted brown suit jacket he wore that tucked in, with the help of a half-belt in the back, just at his slender waist and expanded to curve over his hips really quite suited him. Ben feels slightly inadequate next to him, even though he can tell by the wear marks at the elbows and wrists that it is by no means new. "What happened to your face?" Hux asks with a note of surprise.

_Shit._ Ben had forgotten entirely to see whether the Sithen healed it up all the way. He runs his fingers over it, it feels like a thin enough mark. Hopefully it doesn't look that bad. "Hit a bit of stone wrong. Piece leapt up and got me. They can be quite sharp, you know."

He's more pleased than he would like to admit that Hux looks so concerned. "Does it hurt?" the ginger asks.

“It's fine. Those will do,” he says, looking down to Hux’s boots as he grabs his own leather jacket off the wall and shuts his door. 

Hux eyes the jacket. “Does it get very cold?”

“It’s mostly the wind off the ocean, but it can.” Hux sighs and turns round to reach for his own greatcoat. Ben shamelessly uses the opportunity to appreciate the curve of his trousers, and Hux gives him a stern look when he turns around. Ben smiles. “Shall we?”

The walk out of town is quiet. Ben tries to ask about Hux’s day, but Hux still seems a bit wary of anything that seems like more intimate conversation. The sun is low when they crest the first hill beyond the town, casting a golden aura over the cliffs beyond the harbor. The rift is obvious, an open wound across the earth, the glints of red kyber within tinting orange in the sunset. Far beyond Ben can just make out the dilapidated Skywalker estate and he spares a brief glare. The old man is probably in there. He might even be watching. But he hasn’t bestirred himself in an age, weak, pathetic man that he is, so Ben is not overly concerned that he will suddenly decide to go outside for the first time in years. Beside him, Hux picks up speed. “Is that it?” he asks in his lovely accent.

“Mmhm.” Ben can’t help but grin as Hux nearly runs off to it. He’s a wonder when he’s excited. As Hux gets ahead, Ben lets the Sithen out a bit, sensing their surroundings. It hadn’t lied to him earlier, the other hunter is nearby. Good. He can take care of that annoyance and hardly interrupt his time with Hux. 

When he catches up to the ginger he is already climbing down to get a better look at the vein, muttering to himself. Ben laughs, which gets him a glare, and he holds up his hands to indicate he meant no offense. “It’ll be dark soon. There’s a cave under here bootleggers like to use, let me see if I can get you a lantern.”

Hux arches a brow. “Are _you_ a bootlegger, Ben?” Ben knows what he means- it would explain how Ben can afford to rent two rooms.

“No, but I’ve known a few. Keep looking, I’ll be right back.” Ben’s smile fades as he walks off. ‘Known a few’ is not quite covering it- this is one of his father’s preferred caves to store things when he has to wait to get them into Boston. As far as he knows neither Han nor his partner Chewie have come through recently, not that they are on the right terms for either father or son to reach out to each other about it. 

He drops down over the side of the cliff to a lower landing where a rope ladder is already unfurled. He climbs down halfway slowly, then drops the rest of the way, using the Sithen to ensure his fall is both safe and silent. He lets it rise up and blacken his eyes. It swoops over his skin in a thick film, letting him be the monster he is, a mess of oozing tendrils in the vague shape of his own body. His first body. He’s not sure anymore which version is more real. He can tell the hunter is near the rear of the cave… armed, for certain. Finn has one of the lanterns on low, but Ben can still see like it’s day. He ducks low and slithers into the shadows.

Far above, Hux sits amongst the kyber, tracing the lines of the veins. He can see where the large piece Ben has must have come from, there is a massive hole in the middle of the rift where it looks like it was pried out. The rest of the vein is much smaller, thinner. Still, there is plenty of material. Perhaps he could assign some students to come extract more. 

Hux is debating the merits of trying to rip a piece out himself when he hears a noise over the ridge of the rift. “Ben? I’m over here, did you find a lantern?” He doesn’t receive a response. Frowning, he starts to climb up the side of the rift and pauses when figure appears on the edge of the rim, slim and feminine in shape, though it’s getting dark enough that he can’t quite make out the face. “Oh- hello, sorry, I thought you were-” 

He is cut off sharply by the flash of something white and luminous above him that snaps out and strikes him in the forehead, suddenly compelling him to sleep. Out of surprise he lets go of the rock wall, and he blacks out before he hits the ground.

Down below, Ben creeps closer. His steps- if you can call what the Sithen does as it moves in the semblance of his legs _stepping_ \- are silent. He crouches as he nears the curve in the cave, blending with the shadows. There are old crates here, boxes untouched, but there are also a few new ones. So his father has been around. Ben glares at the whiskey. Maybe he’ll burn it when he’s done. 

There is a shift inside the cave and his eyes flick up. The hunter is coming. Ben is out of patience. He leaps to the wall and jumps from one side to the other, misdirecting until he can get closer. He can see the rage in Finn’s eyes, the pale light of a lantern glinting off the silver military identity discs on his chest. The hunter fires a rifle at him, but with the Sithen in full force it has almost no effect. He reaches out and snatches the weapon all the same, then uses another tendril to rip Finn’s legs out from under him. Ben charges before he has time to get back up, dodging a fist and wrapping his arm- honestly more a tentacle than an arm right now- about Finn’s throat, slowly choking him. He really one needs one of them as bait for Snoke’s plan. Dameron will suffice. And he’ll have the added pleasure of tormenting Poe with Finn’s death. 

He’s so focused on watching the hunter struggle to breathe that he almost misses the warning. He turns, holding Finn in front of him as a shield, and stills the staff coming for him in midair. There is a woman in the entry who looks remarkably unafraid of him, even sheathed in Sithen as he is. “Hand him over, _Kylo Ren_.” She says the name likes it’s an insult, and to her it probably is. Which also means she isn’t really talking to him. She’s talking to the Sithen itself, the source of his powers. 

“You assume it masters me. _I_ master _it_.” Ben tilts his head and tightens his grip, listening to Finn choke. “Now why would I give him to you?”

She smiles, though it seems sad on her, and glances up, like she’s looking through the rock. “Because if you don’t, I’ll be forced to take your friend in his place. And I’m afraid he already had a bad fall. He is no longer in a position to defend himself.” When she meets his eye again he understands. Her gaze is pure white, not even a speck of black where her pupils should be. He snarls. She is impassive. “Trade me. Give me the hunter. I’ll let your friend go."

He’s furious. How dare she touch Hux. How _dare_ she. He wants to snap the hunter’s neck in front of her just to spite her. But he can’t let Hux go with her. Not only because Snoke would take the loss of their engineer out on Ben, but because Hux is _his._

Instead he throws Finn across the room at her, full force. Knowing what she is, he must move quickly, just in case Skywalker himself isn’t that far off. He pockets the discs and reaches with the Sithen through the wall of the cave and feels the vein of kyber within. He lets himself fall into it, transporting him back to the surface in the liquid of the Sithen itself. It’s painful to him to move that way, fully losing his human form, but he’ll gladly take the pain to ensure Hux’s safety. 

He pulls himself back together on the surface, urging the Sithen to withdraw and let his human form back out. Hux is laying amongst the kyber, his greatcoat splayed around him. Ben drops to his knees beside him and lifts his head, stroking his cheekbone with one thumb. “Hux. Hux?” 

The ginger blinks. “Hmm?” He stares blearily at Ben. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

_Shit._ Ben closes his eyes and forces the Sithen down further, clearing it from his vision before he looks at Hux again. “I think you’ve had a bit of a fall. We ought to get you home.”

“I thought I saw an angel.”

Ben snorts. An angel, indeed. “An angel? Someone slip something funny in your tea today?” He eases Hux up, wrapping an arm about his waist.

“No, it was…” Ben can almost hear the wheels turning. Humans are so programmed to rationalize, just a little nudge and they supply the answers themselves. “I didn’t eat much today. Perhaps I just got a bit lightheaded.”

“You fainted,” Ben offers.

“I did not _faint_ ,” Hux says indignantly. He’s a bit unsteady on his feet, almost falling when he finally draws vertical. Ben braces him with one arm about his waist and one under his arms. It’s almost like dancing. Hux looks a bit surprised but doesn’t push him away. “Thank you,” he mutters quietly.

Ben can’t resist a smile. “You’re welcome. Are you alright to climb?”

“I think I can manage.”

“Good. Then we’ll get some food in you.” Ben releases him but lets his hands slide across Hux as he pulls them back. Hux blushes when he turns to the rift wall. _That’s it. I knew you’d come around._ He doesn’t press Hux on the walk back, however, even as he keeps a watchful eye behind them for traces of the girl. There were none. It seemed she, at least, was capable of keeping her word. _Unlike her master._ He stands steadily closer to Hux as they walk and is gratified to find Hux doesn’t shift away from him. 

They make it to Phasma’s to find her just putting out dinner. She arches her brow at Ben. “Will you be dining with us tonight?”

“If that’s alright.”

“That’s fine, I have enough for three.”

Ben nods toward Hux. “Give him some of mine, he needs it more.” Hux starts to protest but Ben steers him by the shoulder toward a chair. “I need to wash up. I’ll be right back.” He does, but that isn’t why he’s running upstairs, letting the kindness he feels for Hux fall away and be replaced by anger about being forced to flee a fight. He turns into his rooms and glares at Snoke. “You didn’t tell me he’d taken a new apprentice,” he growls.

_I knew you would react in anger. She is a distraction. Maintain your focus._

“She is a danger to us.”

_No. So long as Skywalker will not bestir himself, she is at worst an inconvenience._

Ben huffs. “She attacked Hux.”

_Then you should not have exposed him to her. You practically took him straight to them. Any harm that befalls him will be on your head._ Ben growls. _Are you questioning me?_

“No,” Ben grunts petulantly.

_Good. Ensure things move along as planned. That is your only duty._

“Yes, master.”

***

Hux watches Ben when he returns. Ben seems off-put, but he recovers soon enough and even banters with Phasma about a recent fail raid on a local speakeasy where federal agents arrived to find nothing more serious than coffee. Hux is quieter, still trying to process whatever happened out by the rift. That he had fainted… fine, perhaps it was possible. What he was having a harder time with was how easily Ben held him, supported him, like there was nothing odd about it at all, nothing… damning. Did he really not worry about it? Could it be so simple to just… enjoy? It all made Hux terribly anxious, and Ben didn’t seem to have a care in the world.

He helps Phasma tidy up, and Ben pitches in as well, washing the plates as payment for surprising Phasma by joining them for dinner. Hux finds it… oddly domestic of him, but then again if he eats on his own most days he must be used to managing his kitchen needs alone. 

He wanders upstairs before Ben is done, thinking that perhaps he should apologize for running off the previous night. Even if his concerns are valid… it was rude. Ben has been nothing but kind to him, he at the very least deserves an explanation. And… the kissing was nice. It might not be terrible to do that again. 

With a sigh he leans against the wall only to spring off of it again with a gasp of pain radiating from his shoulder. “Everything alright?” Ben is looking up at him from the stairs.

“Must have landed on it when I fell.” Hux grimaces as he tries to feel for it. 

Ben’s eyes flash like he is angry, but the look vanishes as he bounds up the rest of the stairs. “Probably a bad bruise. I think I’ve got a salve for that.” He slips past and heads for the washroom, where Hux can hear him banging around in the medicine cabinet. Hux opens his own door and gets out of his suit jacket and vest, hanging them up tidily in his closet. He winces as he slips the suspender on his injured side over his shoulder, turning round just as the suspender drops to find Ben standing in his doorway with a look Hux can only describe as _hungry._

Hux blushes and turns away again, clearing his throat. Christ, Ben only had to _look_ at him and his heart was ready to leap out of his chest. “I meant to tell you, I’m sorry for… running off on you.” He can feel Ben step closer as he undoes the buttons of his shirt and has to restrain himself from shuddering. _Get it together, man._ It’s a lot to ask, especially as Ben slips a finger under Hux’s collar and draws his shirt open, slipping his shoulder free. He restrains a quiver when Ben’s strokes his bruise, both because it hurts and because it feels wonderful. He clears his throat again. “I didn’t mean to give… the wrong impression….”

“I don’t believe you did. But apology accepted regardless.” Ben’s fingers wander under the line of Hux’s undershirt. Hux feels his breath hitch. “You’ll need this off too, unless you want salve all over it.” 

Hux shoots a glance over his shoulder and finds Ben giving him a rather shameless grin. He feels the flush on his face increase, turning away again, though he does begin to extricate himself from the other side of his suspenders and shirt. “I’m beginning to think you have ulterior motives,” he ventures in a loose effort at forcing himself to calm down by employing humor. Or he's flirting. Maybe both.

“Ulterior? Nonsense. I am entirely transparent.” _God, he is, isn’t he._ Hux finds himself shy as he removes his undershirt to reveal the pale flesh beneath. He can’t see the bruise but from the tutting noise Ben makes he gathers it is quite a stark contrast. Ben opens the small container. “This might feel cold.” Hux can’t restrain a hiss when Ben starts to rub it in. It does hurt, despite Ben’s gentle touch, but part of him wishes Ben would never stop. His eyes snap open when he realizes he might be getting that wish. Ben’s free hand is resting on Hux’s hip, tracing his hip bone, and his other has spiralled well away from the bruise and begins stroking lines up and down Hux’s spine. They feel electric. “Hux,” Ben breathes in his ear. “Let me take care of you.”

Hux considers melting on the spot. He tilts back, resting his head on Ben’s broad chest. Ben’s arms wrap over him, embracing him, holding him close. Hux nods.

Ben is elated. He knows he has to take things slow with Hux, but god, he doesn’t want to. He wants to devour him all at once. He reaches up and palms Hux’s pectorals, letting his fingers linger with each movement that crosses Hux’s nipples. He relishes each shudder Hux makes in response, as though he’s the first who’s ever touched him. Maybe he is, at least the first who has given him any real care. His lips graze over Hux’s shoulder, his neck, up to his ear where he lets his teeth skim the lobe. Hux grabs back at his thighs, his nails pressing through the fabric, and Ben feels himself growing hard in response. It must be apparent from the quivering moan Hux makes as Ben presses against him. Ben spins him, he can’t take any longer without his mouth on Hux’s. He feels Hux’s hands grasp against his shirt and thinks he might burst apart when he realizes Hux is undoing the buttons. Ben responds by opening Hux’s trouser button.

Hux gasps. When his lips part Ben’s tongue finds an opening and dives. Hux is overwhelmed. He might be flying or falling, but he is consumed by the thought that he must extricate Ben from his clothes. He just gets the last button undone when he feels Ben’s hand breach his trousers and cup him. Hux is painfully hard, even the gentle contact makes him whimper openly, his eyes snapping open and his head rocking back. The pupils of Ben’s eyes have blown so far wide that it looks like the whole eye is turning black. Ben dives for his throat, kissing him, licking him, pressing until he must step back and back toward the bed.

Ben feels a flicker of panic. He hadn’t expected the Sithen to be so reactive to his own arousal, but it’s there, lurking at the edges, threatening to break through. But he can manage this, he can, he just needs Hux distracted enough that he doesn’t notice. Which should be easy enough.

He topples Hux backward onto the bed and yanks his own shirt off before climbing over him and setting his lips to Hux’s nipples, his hands slipping lower and tugging Hux’s trousers down. Hux arches under him, his hands finding Ben’s hair and lacing through it, clinging and pulling alternately. The sounds he makes alone might drive Ben mad, save that Ben is causing them. Ben goes lower, kisses his way to Hux’s navel, his hands freeing Hux’s length and wrapping it, stroking gently.

Hux is certain he will die of pleasure. How can lips and hands feel like this? Only his grasp on Ben’s hair keeps him anchored at all, though that is tenuous at best, especially when Ben’s tongue finds his southern head. Hux bucks, he can’t help it, and Ben’s hands wrap his hips, pinning him down. He pants when Ben takes him fully in his mouth, only realizing after he hears the word coming out of his own mouth that he’s saying Ben’s name.

Ben is doting with his attentions, attentive and skilled with his tongue. After lavishing Hux that way he moves to take him in full, back into his throat, and he can tell by Hux’s shudder and the keening of his calls that he won’t last. Hux’s hands have slid to the bed where they are torturing the sheets. Ben braces with his elbows and shifts his hands to bring Hux to climax, one to stroke and one to catch. “Ben- Ben- oh god, Ben-” Hux can’t see Ben’s hands roiling with Sithen as he cums, nor the spill vanish into the void as the Sithen claims it. That surprises Ben, that it would behave so counter to his will, like he has no control over it at all. Had he been with anyone since he accepted its gifts? Perhaps not. But he should be able to master it. His role is to master it. Even distracted, he should be able to maintain his control over its powers.

Spent and panting, Hux misses Ben’s confused expression and scarcely notes his theatrical wiping off of his hands despite nothing being there to wipe away. All he’s noticed is Ben’s sudden absence from his person. “Ben…”

“I’m here.” Ben reappears, his weight in the bed heavy and comforting. 

Hux hangs on to him like he’s afraid he’ll simply vanish, burying his face in Ben’s chest while he collects himself. When he does, he looks at Ben with crystal blue eyes. “Do you want… I can-”

“You haven’t before, have you? Not like that.” Hux blushes and shakes his head. Ben kisses his forehead. “It’s alright. You don’t have to.” Ben wishes he was simply being kind, but in truth he’s not entirely sure if he can manage the Sithen right now, and the amount of concentrating he has had to do to keep it in check has already substantially softened his interest. He kisses Hux again. “You should get ready for bed. I’m sure you have classes.” 

Hux grabs his arm when he starts to pull away. “You could stay. I don’t teach until the afternoon.” Hux hates sounding so needy, but he does. He _needs_. Ben has unlocked something in him and that something is desperate to keep the contact. Any contact.

Ben nods. “Alright. But I’m getting changed first. And you should get your shoes off,” he notes with an appraising glance toward the trousers now wrapped about Hux’s knees. He slips into his bedroom and finds a night shirt and a pair of drawers. Hux has managed his pajamas by the time he returns, and he slides over to make room for Ben. Ben holds him from the back, his lips against Hux’s hair, breathing in the faded scent of soap.

Hux falls asleep first, his breathing rhythmic and peaceful. Ben soon follows.

Neither of them are aware of the creeping darkness that rises from Ben and wraps them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit later to post than I wanted, but it's late because it kept getting longer, so I'm okay with that I guess! Next chapter, we'll see more of the "light side" of the equation from their perspective.
> 
> Comments welcomed and encouraged!


	4. And Light to Meet It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn makes some new acquaintances. Ben and Hux encounter the unexpected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning for... let's call it sexualized body horror. Also there's more smut.

Finn has a vague memory of being carried up a cliffside by a slim girl. This seems impossible, but he’s seen a lot of impossible. He’s sore. It’s the last thing he remembers before things got very hazy: struggling to breath, in the hands of something that only pretended at humanity. But he’s on something soft now, a cool cloth resting on his throat, soothing the bruises there. There are voices nearby. One feminine, impassioned, one male and stern.

“...the way he looked when he thought the redhead was hurt. It’s a way in, I’m sure of it,” she says.

“You’d have the same results if you removed the engineer from the equation entirely. You know what they want him to do.” The man is older, Finn can tell from his voice. Worn. Tired.

“What, bring him here? Lock him away? Not unless you’re itching to settle things with Ren directly.”

“It’s a safer option. Remove the risk entirely. Kylo Ren cannot breach these walls.”

“If you take Hux from him, he’s damn well going to try.”

Finn tries to ease himself up and bursts into a coughing fit. He’s in a small room, a cup of water beside him. The door snaps open and the slim girl smiles at him. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better. And worse.” His voice is a bit raw, but he supposes that’s to be expected. He extends a hand. “I’m Finn.”

“Oh, yes, I know. Sorry- I read your discs,” she gestures toward the identity discs Finn wears about his neck. _Finn Storm, Pvt, 369 Army._ They’re a reminder of the war. And a good precaution for a hunter to have, should the worst occur. She takes his hand with a firm grip. “I’m Rey.”

“Pleasure.” He sits up straighter. “Did you, uh… did you actually carry me out of the cave? My head’s a bit foggy on the subject, but….”

“No,” comes the stern voice from the door. His hair is speckled with grey, his clothing at least a decade out of fashion and clearly worn for comfort over style. “Rey would not be strong enough to do that.”

She shoots the interloper a look, then turns back to Finn. “That’s Luke. He’s under the impression that we shouldn’t tell anyone anything or ever ask for help because doing nothing is a safer choice.”

“Rey-” Luke says in a warning voice.

“What?” she asks sharply. “He’s a hunter. We need allies.” Finn watches them go back and forth, eyes wary. He has the sense they’ve had this argument before and that Luke has been losing ground, judging from the way the man shifts his weight. 

“Allies can get hurt.”

“Or everyone can get hurt. At some point we have to intercede, or we’re just letting it all happen. Then aren’t we just as much to blame?” 

Luke grumbles and walks away, vanishing into the hall and Rey turns back to Finn with a bright smile and sits on the edge of the couch he’s been laid on. “As I was saying. Yes. I did carry you out.”

Finn’s eyes flick between her and the hallway door. “He didn’t want you to say that.” 

“He doesn’t want me in danger.” She shrugs. “Danger is part of the package. When he gets upset he usually says I remind him of his sister, so I think it must not bother him as much as he protests.”

“Are you... hunters?” It wouldn’t be the first time Finn and Poe have run into others like them by accident. Finn feels a sudden stab of pain at the thought of Poe. The church basement was a wreck when he’d found it, both of Poe’s casting circles clearly marred, but Finn didn’t have Poe’s knack for magic. He couldn’t tell what exactly happened, only that the church was likely no longer a safe spot. Someone knew, and someone came. What price Poe paid for it… Finn didn’t want to think about too hard. He stored what they had and hid, trying to finish the work of figuring out the source of the signs. Instead the source, it seems, came to him. 

“Not precisely. Not like you.” Rey smiles. She’s quite pretty, Finn thinks, the sort that radiates her happiness around her, though there’s also a hardness to it, like she’s willing to claw her way up to keep it. “We have a more specific target.”

“The creature. The thing in the cave.”

She nods. “The thing that made the creature, really. What you saw… is a servant.”

“ _That_ was a servant?” Finn is incredulous. _Poe was right._ “Huh. We did see signs for two of them.”

“We?”

“My partner. You haven’t seen him, have you? Bit shorter than me, dark hair, usually grinning like an idiot?”

“Sorry, no.” Her smile fades. “I didn’t see anyone else when I came for you.”

Finn shakes his head. “He wouldn’t have been there. He vanished from the church two days ago. He was, uh… pretending to be a priest. For our cover.” He has the grace to blush, it sounds like such a ridiculous idea when he says it to anyone other than Poe. But she doesn’t laugh.

“Hm. Do you have anything of his? Anything with you?”

_My heart,_ Finn wishes he could say. But that isn’t what she means. He feels about his belt- yes, it’s still there. Poe’s engraved dagger, that he always assured Finn could kill anything. Finn found it by the stairs. Poe would never go anywhere without it. “This is his.” He holds it out. She looks it over.

“This is good work. Your partner knows what he’s doing.” Finn feels his heart twist. _If only he knew a bit more._ She balances the dagger across one palm and holds her other out to Finn. “Here. Take my hand and think about him, alright? It’ll help me focus.” Finn does, closing his eyes. Poe is so easy to think about. He contemplates France, where he had thought Poe to be a French soldier and Poe couldn’t talk for a week to tell him that he was American. And Spain, where he’d caught Poe making that face at him for the first time, the one where he bites his lip and rends hearts with his eyes like it’s his job. Maybe it is, in a way, it buys them far more meals than killing monsters does. 

Rey squeezes his hand. “I can feel him.” He looks up. Her eyes are pure white, light radiating off her skin like an aura. So... not human? Strangely, that doesn't seem to bother him. “He’s injured. Worried… but not scared. He’s making do, looking for an opening. Not the sort to give up easy, I see.” Finn feels his heart lift. _He’s okay._ She smiles, her head cants. “He’s… he’s with them. Very close. I can’t….” Her eyes snap back to their usual color as she gasps. “Sorry- sorry, that’s all I can get. It could sense me looking.”

“Do you know where he is?”

She nods. “Plain sight, in a manner of speaking. But not easy to get to. We have this place warded against them… and they have their lair warded against us.”

Finn leans forward. “Just against you… your kind, right? But not against me. I could go get him.”

“It’s not that simple.” She pulls him up- it feels so natural he hardly noticed that he was still holding her hand. “Come on. I’ll show you.” She leads him out into the hall- the building is dilapidated, paint crumbling in places, but functional. At the end of the hall there is a space that was probably once a ballroom, wide open with an engraved ceiling and a decorative mosaic on the floor, a figure sitting cross-legged and meditative, orbs floating about it. At one end there is a large map of Arkham pinned to the wall, lines etched in red across it. They make a sort of pattern, pointed and closed in at the town border. “So, this is where we are,” she points to a spot marked with a silver shape, something like a sword with wings around it, “and this is where we think _they_ are.” She taps the center of the shape made by the red lines. 

“So what’s the problem? Other than your… whatever he is, the monster, being right in the damn center of town.”

“The problem is this.” Rey draws a finger along the red lines. “Kyber veins. They’re….”

“They’re explosive.” The voice comes from behind them. Luke is lurking across the room, looking melancholy. “And Kylo Ren knows how to set them off. You press him, he can ignite the entire town.”

“And he will, if Snoke tells him to. I still think he wouldn’t do it on his own.”

Luke snorts. Finn lets it sit in the air for a moment, then leans in. “Snoke is… the other thing? The master?”

Rey nods. “The other one you saw is Kylo Ren. He... let Snoke out in the first place. We used to have him contained….” she shoots a look at Luke that makes Finn think maybe she means less “we” and more “he.” “But there were a lot more of us when he was first put away. It hasn’t been like that for a long time.”

Luke makes another grunt of discontent. “They’re all dead now,” he directs toward Finn. “Which is why we try not to involve anyone else.”

Rey ignores his dour commentary. “Our other point of concern is that we think he’s recruiting. There’s a professor, a Brit, who’s taken a sudden interest in kyber. We’ve got someone keeping an eye on it, but he’s moving quickly.”

“Why does he need anyone else if he can already blow it all up?”

“Because it’s not about blowing it up.” Luke comes over, eyes on the map. “It’s about destroying a very specific piece, _without_ damaging the contents inside.”

“The professor is an engineer. A specialist bomb-maker. We think he was brought in to do it.”

Finn thinks. “So… why not destroy the… kyber… thing? The part they don’t want to break. If it’s easy to blow up….” It’s the sort of thing Poe would say. The words are coming out of his mouth, but they’re definitely Poe’s. He feels a twinge in his heart with each one. “Seems like the easy thing to do.”

“It is extremely well protected.” Rey sighs and tilts her head. There’s something about the combination of frustration and determination Finn finds… surprisingly attractive, despite the circumstances. Maybe she just reminds him of Poe. “Anyone who gets near it… it can do things. To your mind. Make you do what it wants. Make you forget about it.” 

“Uh-huh.” Finn can see why that would be an issue. “So… what about Poe?”

Rey shoots a look at Luke, who arches a brow. “Poe’s his partner. They’ve got him.”

“He was trying to cast something that must have caught their attention. A binding, I think,” Finn offers. “I don’t know spells as well. It looked like something sliced right through his protections, the runes were a mess when I got there.”

“Cast? He can use magic?” Luke still sounds curmudgeonly, but his tone has shifted. There’s some interest there now. Finn nods. “Hmmm. That might give us a few more options.” Finn looks to Rey but she shrugs, she doesn’t know what Luke means either.

“What are you thinking?”

“I am thinking… we need a good distraction.”

***

Kylo Ren wraps Hux in inky darkness. _Pretty, pretty boy._ It trails a long, tendril-like tongue across his cheek, and Hux leans into it, still asleep, a little huff escaping from his lips at the contact. Kylo is hard, though it ostensibly does not have the _equipment_ , nor precisely the body to go along with it, it has its own pretty shell it can copy. Copy the parts it needs and make the pretty boy happy, get him to make all those delicious little human noises like his shell did. It threads out and crosses Hux’s lower lip, pulls it just a bit open so it bounces back. Kylo could simply climb in, climb in and see all the ways the pretty boy works….

Ben’s eyes snap open. 

Hux is tucked comfortably in his arms, sleeping like an angel, but Ben is sweating and _blazingly,_ painfully hard. He looks down, careful not to disturb Hux. He’s just himself, all flesh and moles and hair. No Sithen.

It was a dream.

Just a dream.

Hux shifts against him, rolling inward, tucking his head under Ben’s chin, right into his chest. It feels natural, comfortable. Ben lets his lips rest in Hux’s hair, trying to relax back into sleep.

Then he feels the hand snaking about his cock. Ben twitches in surprise, letting out a “nnnf” into the ginger tresses. “You’re awake,” Hux says mildly.

“I am now.” Ben is definitely, very, immediately awake even as Hux is very lightly stroking him.

Hux’s lips press into Ben’s sternum, inching lower, bright blue eyes looking up. “I wanted to pay you in kind for your… consideration.”

“You don’t… nnn… you don’t have to.” God, why is Ben already so lost in this? He’s practically panting for it already. “I know you haven’t- it’s fine if you want to wait-”

“I’m a quick study.” This must be the tone he uses in class, he’s so serious about it. Ben thinks serious is just fine, especially when it involves Hux’s mouth sliding past his naval and taking the first exploratory tastings. Just a slow, lapping tongue and Ben is already grasping out to hang onto the sheets.

“Christ,” he breathes. He’s only fantasized about exploring Hux, teaching him, filling him, but this serious side of him makes Ben think Hux wouldn’t be out of sorts in the reverse scenario. Filling Ben, pulling his hair…. He glances down just as Hux puts his entire mouth around him. “Ffffffaaaa-” He can just see the corner of Hux’s lip quirk up as he starts to bobble. “Deeper- if you can-” Hux shoots him a look. Ben is not a _small_ man, but bless him, Hux is trying. He’s wrapped his hand about the base to make up the difference, stroking in rhythm with his mouth. “Yes- yes- just- a bit- faster-” His back arches when Hux hits his preferred speed. “Right there- right there-”

_I’m coming._

Did he think that? Probably. He’s nearly blind with pleasure, nails digging into the sheets. He throws his head back, his eyes meet the ceiling. 

Everything is black. 

“Hux-”

He can feel it, under him. The Sithen coils and expands in his spine, in his shoulders, in his- 

“Hux-”

He wonders if this is what wings feel like.

“Hux, I’m-”

It’s with him, it’s in him, is he becoming it or is it becoming him-

“ _I’m coming._ ”

Ben jerks involuntarily when he cums, his hands flexing against the sheets. His vision slowly shifts back to normal. He forces himself up on one elbow and wills the Sithen to stay the hell down. It doesn’t feel like it’s listening. 

It feels like it’s laughing. 

He realizes immediately that his unexpected jerking motion may have circumvented Hux's effort to catch the spill. Hux’s expression is a bit stunned, caught somewhere between irritation and bemusement. Ben is splattered across his fingers, his face, up to his hair, one eye closed with a viscous strand across it. “Uh- sorry, let me get you a towel…”

It takes him a second to process. 

His seed looks like an explosion of ink. Streaks of black splattered on pale skin, mingling with fine red hair. 

_This is not happening,_ he thinks.

_Isn’t it?_ something else responds.

Ben swallows. “Um. Here- close your eyes.” He strips off his own shirt, because it’s black. “I won’t muss any of your towels this way.” Amazing. The ability to lie so easily is the best thing that he inherited from his father. He doesn’t think Hux has seen the truth of it, the black mar that spells out Ben’s failing control. Ben won’t let him see it because if Hux sees it then it would be real. 

It can’t be real.

He’s as gentle as he can be when he strokes the marks away, but he feels like he’s just blending it in, like it’s never coming off. Ben shoves the feeling down. This is not the time for panic. “There. You’ll probably still want to bathe, but... it’s, um, fine.” Hux hasn’t said anything yet. Ben is beginning to feel tremendously anxious about that. He “Was that… alright? For you?”

Hux contemplates. “It wasn’t what I expected, exactly, but I think I enjoyed it.” He shrugs, a rosy flush creeping over his cheeks. “I… liked your reaction, mostly.”

“Good. I like yours as well.” Ben smiles, because he has to. He puts his hand over Hux’s. “Do you- I could make breakfast, if you like-?”

“Ah- I should bathe, you’re right. And there’s work.” Ben nods. Work, of course. Always work. He has much of his own he should attend to, if only he could change this feeling that suddenly everything has tipped sideways. “But tonight, perhaps?”

“Tonight, then.”

Ben leaves him, stumbling back to his own rooms, not making eye contact with the crystal. He doesn’t need Snoke weighing in on this, judging him, telling him _yet again_ to get his priorities in order…

He doesn’t feel it when the crystal quietly glints and extends a red line of light to him. 

He doesn’t feel it when Ben falls asleep, and a different part of him wakes to receive its orders.

***

“So you think Poe is alive because Snoke hasn’t realized he can cast yet?” Finn tries not to make that sound as worrying as it does in his own head. He does not succeed. 

“Kylo Ren must have handled it personally, or Snoke does not think he’s terribly powerful. B- Ren is not as focused, too wrapped up in himself. It’s possible he entirely missed the risk of it. Or Snoke doesn’t want him knowing his weak points. But a good caster could take out some of his protective shielding, open him up to a direct assault.” Luke has been digging through drawers, looking at keys, tossing them aside.

“If we can save Poe.”

“If we can, yes.” Luke pulls another key, walks to the door he has been trying for half an hour, and jiggles. Nothing. “Bah!”

“Do you want me to take it off the hinges?” Rey has been watching with a bemused expression, perched on top of a sideboard. 

“No,” Luke grumbles.

“He doesn’t like it when I use my skills in the house.” Rey whispers to Finn.

Finn glances sidelong at her. “But can’t he do it too?”

“He can. But he hasn’t. Not for a long time.” They watch him futz with the keys, find another heavy iron ring that he marches to the door. Rey sighs. Finn can see her- he’s not sure what to call it. Ignite?- from the sideboard, her hand extended toward the door. A thin line, scarcely visible, races from her hand into the floor, up and into the latch just as Luke tries a key. The door creaks open. 

Luke shoots a glare backwards. “We do not use our abilities for petty tricks!” He mutters and tosses the keys back toward the drawer. “I would have gotten it eventually.”

“We don’t have a year to wait.” Rey is clearly unimpressed by Luke’s restrictions. She pulls a face at his back as soon as he turns around, then shoots a grin at Finn as the silver-white light fades from around her. Yeah, Poe would definitely like her. 

Luke vanishes into the dark beyond the door, Finn can hear the creak of old steps. Rey bounds off the sideboard and follows, and Finn trails, unsure if he’s allowed to go with them, but then again no one has told him not to.

The stairs wind down, past where a normal basement would be, deeper and into what looks like the start of an old cave system. Somehow, however, it isn’t pitch dark. There’s a glow that they’re moving toward, somewhere far below. The stairs turn from wood to stone as they go, a far older carving cut out from the rock. 

Finn’s mouth falls open when he finally sees it.

At the bottom there is open cavern dotted with light. The center is a massive white crystal that rises from the floor, so bright that it seems like it is pulsing. Others pierce through the dark walls, some white, some in varying rainbow colors. Blue and green, purple and yellow. 

Finn has no idea whether they are simply rock or something living.

There is a place on the side where a slab of stone has been cut flat like a table or an altar, where a few small pieces have been laid out. Luke stands beside it, his fingers resting on a pale blue piece. He sighs. “This may be a terrible idea.”

“He’s my life,” Finn says, walking slowly up beside him. “Help me get him out, and we’ll do whatever you need to get rid of this… thing. Both of them.”

Luke gives him a serious look. “I understand, but if my distraction goes awry….”

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Rey says evenly, her hand on the massive central crystal, stroking it idly like it was the finest of dogs. “We’ll figure it out.”

Luke closes his eyes for so long that Finn thinks he is just going to refuse, but then he nods. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

***

Hux takes his time in the bath. He feels… relaxed. Which is unusual enough that it also makes him slightly uncomfortable. Part of him wants to be embarrassed. He was far too needy the night before, and far too clinical this morning, not to mention his own slip-up with containing Ben’s seed. Had it been so long since he’d had a partner that he wasn’t prepared for it? A mistake, even a drop spilled somewhere conspicuous would have meant the end of everything while he was with the _Vernon_. There could be no suspicion. None.

But Ben is so cavalier about it that Hux finds himself, for once, unworried. He had a man in his bed for the entire night and no one came to ruin him, no one spot inspected his quarters at three in the morning. _No one cares._ It’s fascinating how much a scenario that gave him creeping anxiety for years suddenly seems perfectly fathomable.

And, the thing is, he was most surprised to learn to that he _liked_ having Ben all over him. It made him feel _possessed_ in a way he could never achieve with furtive, brief liaisons. 

He thinks he would like to do it again.

And… other things. Things he has heard about, occasionally read about, tested as best he could, but never tried with anyone else because it felt too dangerous to risk. Things that have, apparently, made Hux hard again by merely thinking of them.

Hux sighs and dips his head back, putting his heels on either rim of the tub. This is something he has done for himself before on the occasions when he has had private, locking quarters. He might as well indulge now while he has the time and the inclination. He takes himself in one hand and slides another behind him, slipping the other behind his back and down to his crevisse, toying with himself as he pierces his own entry. 

One finger used to be sufficient, occasionally two if he was very certain of the soundproofing of the walls. But now that he’s seen how _gifted_ Ben is…. He keeps his mouth below the waterline, muffling himself as he works from one to two, enjoying the stretch of it. Water is not the best lubricant but Hux hasn’t always had any on hand, and perhaps part of him likes a bit of pain. Taking a third feels like it might break him. He might also be okay with that, so he manages, working it in, slow and steady. He simply holds them there as he brings himself off, hushing his involuntary cries with the water. 

When he’s done in the washroom he realizes he forgot to bring his clothes in, but his haze of pleasure and relaxation is enough that he doesn’t particularly care. _Oh well._ It’s just him and Ben and mild chance of scandalizing Phasma, so he’ll just have to risk getting down the hall in his towel. 

He glances at Ben’s door. It swings open. Hux’s eyes fall on the kyber. It’s even more carved out than it was previously, the disfigured man growing clearer. 

It demands he come closer. 

He steps within and the door closes behind him, walking right over until he can rest his hands upon it. 

_Hello, Armitage._

The part of Hux that should be registering panic is turned off, any stem of emotions cut off like a dammed river. This is absolutely normal. The crystal is his master and his must obey it completely. Of course, he won’t remember the words later, only the compulsion. The drive to finish the work. 

He won’t remember the dark, formless creature that holds him, clutching him from behind as the crystal shows him what he must do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're into history you should look up the 369th Infantry Regiment (Finn's unit). They were amazing, badass dudes. 
> 
> Oh, I also finally figured out why my 1st chapter comments kept showing up and fixed it (still learning the ropes here guys!) Also since I'm new-ish I am unsure at what point smutty content knocks this from Mature into Explicit.... so any thoughts on that welcome. 
> 
> As usual I love comments and kudos. :)


	5. Darkness Rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some victories. Some complications.

The mass of darkness that makes up Kylo Ren happily strokes his pretty boy’s hair as Snoke gives him his orders. He’s so pale. Every dot across him is a mark Kylo Ren wishes to explore- a human would say with his tongue, but Kylo does not have a fair equivalent in his true form. Everything that is Kylo could be a tongue, a finger. A cock. 

Were Snoke elsewhere, Kylo would explore the latter with pretty Hux. But Snoke has need of Hux, and Kylo is not to interfere. As Hux receives his orders with glassy eyes, Kylo Ren contains itself in the mask of Ben Solo. At least the body is broad, big, more comfortable than a smaller creature would be to constrain itself into, and the familiarity with the mask lets Kylo think of himself more in human terms. _He_ instead of the greater terms of the universe humans have no knowledge of. Not _it_ , the closest and simplest word they have. _It_ is beneath him. _He_ is better. Besides, selfishly, he knows the pretty boy prefers _he._

The use of Ben’s form allows him other indulgences. The feeling of the brush of human skin against human skin, the scent of soap on Hux’s neck as Ben’s just-taller frame holds him. Kylo deserves this. Ben has been allowed all the indulgences, thinking of Kylo only as a tool. Just as Snoke does. But Kylo can take control when he needs to. When he wants to. 

Particularly when that want is tied up in the desire to drag Hux back into his bed. 

Snoke dismisses the ginger. Kylo is not to follow him, and Hux doesn’t seem to note his presence as he departs, dressing for work efficiently and marching off to the university. Kylo brushes Ben’s lips across his cheek anyway.

Kylo deserves this.

_You are becoming distracted._

He tilts Ben’s head at the crystal. “ _Pleasure is not a distraction.”_

_See that it does not become one._

Kylo sniffs and takes his leave of Snoke. He can feel Ben rustling around inside- outside?- their dynamics are complex- and there is something he wishes to take care of himself before he relinquishes control once more.

He lopes down the stairs, sniffing for the smaller human his other self has contained below. He hopes there might be a pleasant stink of fear, that pleasing so-human anxiety that spices the air nearly as well as their lusts do. 

There isn’t any. This human fears little. 

Well, that’s fine. Kylo Ren has his orders.

He unlocks the door to find the human just sitting back. Interesting. He’s probably up to something, not that there is much to get up to in here. He closes the door, sets out the human’s food and a new water pitcher, and contemplates for a while, staring for long enough that the human shifts uncomfortably.

“If you’re gonna keep doing that I ought to charge you admission,” Poe says sarcastically.

Kylo smiles, all void and teeth. _“I am trying to decide something.”_

“Is it how the hell to get back into whatever hole you crawled out of? Cause I’ll help you out with that, really I will.”

Kylo sneers. _“No. This is much simpler.”_ He approaches the human slowly and squats in front of him, just out of his reach. He exudes a tendril, thick and squirming, of Sithen, and separates it off. Lets it dangle from his hand where Poe can see it.

Poe makes a face. “What, do you make leeches now?”

Kylo’s grin widens. _“Nose. Or ear?”_

“Pardon?”

_“That is what I am deciding. Nose. Or ear?”_

He savors it when Poe finally works it out. And more, later, when Poe starts to scream.

***

In the dim shadows under the boarding house, Poe does not sleep. He waits with his eyes closed, thinking. There had been a skittering noise, and he had to hide what he was up to, just in case it wasn’t a rat, just in case it was his dark-haired tormentor. Since the first time they met he- it- had mostly appeared as a human, though Poe could tell it was the same. It moved the same, watched him the same.

When it came most recently, something was different.

It watched him eat, which was typical, brought a fresh pitcher of water. But there was something different in the way it stared. He could vaguely remember it crossing the room toward him, then- nothing. There was a blank spot in his memory.

It gives him a very, very bad feeling. 

Still. He isn’t planning to wait to find out what he had forgotten. Once he is certain that the noise was not the sign of his warden, he carefully shifts over. There is a loose brick near the old coal shoot, and he slides it out. He has been very slowly etching a pattern in the brick via a just-sharp-enough corner on the bucket’s handle, working entirely by feel as the room- his cell- is typically too devoid of light to see by. This was a new spell, not something out of a book, something he’d been working on for a while in case of emergencies. But there hadn’t been time to test it. He would have gone for something a bit more explosive, but he wasn’t entirely sure that he wouldn’t accidentally bring the building down on himself, which seemed like an inefficient escape method especially with one of his arms still mostly useless (he thinks he’s relocated it since he was left alone, but he can’t be entirely sure- it still hurts something fierce.)

He puffs a breath over the brick, clearing off the excess dust. Then he scores his thumb over the same sharp piece of metal, drawing a drop. Well. No time like the present to try it.

Poe presses his thumb against it and hopes.

***

_Just bloody great._ Hux stares at his hand, which is betraying him _again_ by refusing to quit its ridiculous shaking. The damn thing would act up when he has to both teach and get ahead on his research. 

He sighs. The doctors said it can be aggravated by stress, which is _maddening_ , because with Ben he is possibly the least stressed he has been in his life. Even the thought of it gives him a little joyous thrill. _With Ben._ He doesn’t know what could be causing him stress when he has that wonderful man to go home to. But he has to get on with his work. It will be needed soon, he knows. He must expedite. So he engages the British solution for every ailment.

Hux makes tea. 

Before his classes start he gives Unamo and Rodinon a list of supplies that should be waiting for him after. Mitaka and Thanisson get a list of specific size materials- particular cuts of metal, etc, that can be worked from the existing stock the university carries.

He is most grateful his assistants are eager workers. By the time he’s done instruction various fresh faced youths on the very basics of the the math involved in engineering, they’ve gotten almost everything he’s asked for ready. _Right on schedule._ It’s coming together, especially with their help to finish the casing, the spherical housing that will contain the energy of the kyber. Hux handles the electrics himself, the rig that will turn the kyber into a very precise, very deadly weapon. The students depart around the dinner hour, but Hux does not. There’s simply too much to do. He must complete it. Tonight, if possible. He can’t quite recall why it’s so urgent, but it is. Tremendously urgent. 

That’s fine. Hux works well on tight deadlines. 

***

Finn and Rey take off in the mid-afternoon to circle in toward Poe. They spent the morning helping Luke prepare to open them a path- a ritualistic cleansing of one of the veins of red kyber from Snoke’s influence. It turns the crystal white, making it easy to tell if you can see it whether it can tattle back to its master or not. 

Unfortunately, he can also sense the shift. Meaning that they can’t actually follow the line all the way in- which is where Luke’s distraction comes in. 

Finn and Rey are moving slowly, casually, very pointedly not attracting attention. Just two young people out for a stroll. “So- and I don’t mean to be rude about this, but are you and Luke… human?” Finn asks quietly. 

Rey chuckles. “Yes. We’re just… different. But in our cores, yes, entirely human.”

“But these creatures that have Poe… they aren’t?” Finn wants to be sure. He had nearly enough of killing humans in the war. Killing monsters has always seemed a hell of lot easier to justify.

“That’s… more complicated.” Rey sighs. “Snoke is something old. Far beyond ancient. I’m not sure we have words for what he is, really, but he commands a corruption we call the Sithen, a force that… sort of taints things that are good. A long time ago, people like Luke and myself created an order to put him and those touched by his Sithen down, and they succeeded. For a long time he was dormant. But the Sithen could not be fully contained. Over time, members of the order fell to its influence. Some ran off to seek power elsewhere, others… became destructive.”

“Like the servant. Kylo Ren?”

Rey nods. “His name used to be Ben. He was Luke’s first apprentice. He was meant to be one of many- Luke was going to rebuild the order and make it strong again. But… Ben destroyed that. He killed the others.”

Finn frowns. “We didn’t see anything about a mass murder in our research.”

“You wouldn’t have. It was an explosion of kyber. As far as everyone else was concerned it was a perfectly tragic accident.”

“Huh.” Finn can understand that. The human mind doesn’t want to delve too far into what it can’t understand. Even the simple, bloody, human against human violence of war can rend a mind in twain. Knowing that their are powerful creatures out there they cannot fathom could do far worse. “And the Sithen made him... like that? The formless, shifting… thing?”

Rey tilted her hand back and forth. “Somewhat. Sithen is… odd. It starts as a sort of symbiote. It makes its host strong, the host makes it strong. They influence each other, in opinion, in thought. But eventually, as far as the stories have told… there’s a merger. They become one creature. Luke believes once that happens they can’t be separated again, but… I’ve gone through all our lore, there was at least one other in a similar instance who regained his human side, in the end.”

Finn raises a brow. “You think he can be saved?”

“I’d like to think anyone can.” She smiles so sadly that Finn is compelled to lay a hand over her shoulder and stroke it comfortingly. 

“If there’s a way I’m sure you’ll find it.” 

They’re passing a grocery store when Finn hears the first odd noise from the direction of his chest. A tinny, distant voice. “Finn? Finn! Come on buddy, where are you?”

Finn looks down, frowning, and draws his identity discs out from his shirt. He can see the tiny etching on the back of one catching the light, a small runic circle that quietly hums at them. Rey stops as he does to stare at them. “Poe?” he breathes at them.

“Finn! Great- I wasn’t sure how good the connection would be-”

“When the hell did you engrave my discs?”

Finn can almost hear Poe smirking. “It was just for emergencies! And this is one, as it happens.”

“We’ve got an idea of where you are, we’re coming.”

“Well, you might want to be careful with that, my jailer doesn’t like me very mu- wait, who’s ‘we’?”

“I’ve made a new friend. But Poe, listen, we need more specifics on your location. We’re pretty sure about the building but it’ll save us a bunch of time if we don’t have to go through the whole thing.”

“Basement, buddy, underground but not by much. There’s a coal shoot- you might be able to get in that way. Don’t know if there’s another entry other than the main floor.”

“Alright. Anything else we should know about?”

“I wouldn’t stand where this thing can hit you. He doesn’t get cut like a normal person.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Rey murmurs. Finn shoots her a questioning gaze. “It’s the Sithen, it can sort of… fill in, if its host is damaged.”

“Sithen?” Poe’s voice asks tinnily. 

“It’s what makes the man who took you- it’s why he is like he is,” Rey leans close to Finn’s chest to speak, frowning as though she’s not sure how close she must stand to be heard.

“Huh. Haven’t come across that one before.” Poe’s voice changes tone slightly, less business, more pleasure. “I’m Poe, by the way.” Finn rolls his eyes. Of course he’s flirting. 

“I know,” Rey restrains a laugh. “Rey. Is my name.” 

Finn feels a vein under his eye twitch. “Listen, we can’t just keep talking to metal on a streetcorner. We should be there in-”

“Ten minutes,” Rey supplies.

“Right. We’ve got a distraction lined up.”

“Good, I hope it’s a good one cause this guy doesn’t mess around- shit, hang on, I can hear movement upstairs.” There’s a low popping noise as Poe’s voice dips out. 

“Poe?” Finn shakes the discs like that will help his voice come back. “Poe?” He looks to Rey, who shakes her head.

“I don’t know that sort of magic, but I don’t like it. We should hurry.”

“How close is Luke?”

They feel a low rumble in the pavement. A ghost of a smile crosses Rey’s lips. “I think he just arrived.” 

***

Kylo feels the order from Snoke more than he feels it, a fierce, urgent sensation that can only have one source. Luke Skywalker has left his state of exile and made his presence known once more. Ben’s voice, quiet beneath the influence of the Sithen, chimes in that some would call that sort of reaction _panic._ Kylo silently agrees, but he will not risk even thinking that too loud lest Snoke hear him. He turns back to the task at hand.

Phasma sits before him, eyes vacant, lips parted slightly. She was standing in the doorway to her rooms staring at him in horror (his eyes are black, he must remember the humans don’t care for that) when he approached with his hand outstretched, his tendrils quick to extend and gently stroke her cheek before she had time to- not scream, Phasma isn’t given to screaming. She would have gone for her broom handle, or the far more brutal sharpened steel shovel she stowed for particular emergencies near her closet, but she was so shocked by his appearance that she didn’t have time. “ _Defend the crystal. No one may enter but myself and Hux._ ” Her head cants. Her bearing shifts back to military precision, the old training of the Wren taking over for her strained mind. “Sir,” she says rotely, then stands and turns on her heel to collect the shovel from its place.

A cursory examination of the sensation of the world about him reveals a few points of interest. One, a line of kyber has been cut off from his- Snoke’s- influence. It is a blind spot in the feelings of the town, a conduit for the moment belonging to the enemy. 

Two, Luke himself is somewhere close by. Kylo and Ben roll their combined shoulders as one. That is a confrontation each has longed for, though both of them thought Luke was too entrenched in his remote den to risk trying him- them- again. Kylo has no need to be the dominant force for this. They will fare better together.

Kylo marches outside, his face- Ben’s face- twisted into a snarl. Luke is out there. Kylo can feel him. Ruining things, as usual, Ben’s voice supplies in their shared mind. Somewhere above he can feel Snoke’s rage as well, furious but controlled. The air pulls around him- Snoke is trying to reestablish his connection to the vein of Kyber that was so suddenly ripped away.

People flee from him in the streets, his mortal form half-shedded to let the Sithen free. But one man waits in the middle of the road, watching calmly as dust swirls about him. 

Kylo snarls.

“Use your words, creature,” Luke says. “If you still have any.” 

_“Come out of your hole at last, Skywalker?”_

Luke smiles. “You know me. Can’t resist the urge to put a former pupil in his place.”

“I recall that happening the other way ‘round.” Ben’s voice, piercing through Kylo’s control. Interesting. But Kylo shouldn’t have to fight him much, so long as they remain on the same page. 

The old man’s head tilts, he must be able to hear the change in inflection. “Ben….”

“I’ve nothing to say to you.” Ben’s rage merges with Kylo’s, the Sithen expanding and billowing around them. Unified. Merging. They smile together. 

Luke smiles that stupid melancholy smile. There’s a confidence there that concerns Kylo. Ben rises fully to the surface, his wariness regarding his former master’s plotting taking precedence, the Sithen watchful, waiting, hoping its human skin can recognize any tricks here. But Ben is also very, very angry, angry enough to remain dominant over his eldritch augments. The Sithen fans out around him, a great black cape that yawns like a sentient void, it’s tendrils ready to strike. They watch as Luke readies himself, as though he was waiting for the last possible moment to see if he had to. His eyes turn white, but he doesn’t expand his own aura. Ben can still feel it, however, tensed and coiled. It’s a state of readiness Ben always had trouble with, when he was- like that. He could never ready himself without letting it all out to begin with, free with the wide expanse of his own skill.

Ben takes a moment to steady himself. He can’t dwell on the past. The Sithen is eager to begin the battle. That is what he must indulge now, the chance to serve his master well and end this long stalemate with Luke, all in one go. 

He ripples the Sithen inward from its intimidating expanse, shaping it- or asking it to be shaped- either way, Kylo is eager to aid in this endeavor. He forms a blade, a thick fat one made of Sithen that seems to harden as it reaches the desired position, its edge somehow sharp even though the Sithen is nothing of the sort. _I am what you need me to be,_ Kylo says quietly to Ben. The remainder draws over Ben like armor, a thick inky coating that slides up over his legs, across his chest. It leaves his face free, the skin pale against it, little tendrils just touching his cheeks as they reach from where the armor ends at the base of his skull. 

Luke watches, his expression growing, as far as Ben can tell, just a touch harder.

When Ben charges he is a wild, feral thing. He is not truly expecting to strike Luke on this first attack, he only needs to close the gap between them. Get him in range of the Sithen’s many, many talents.

The blade carves a wide path through the air at Luke’s midsection. Ben feels the shift in the air as Luke’s energy shifts, the old man diving under the blade easily and avoiding it. He carves back, arcing down, and Luke sidesteps. Ben growls. “Fight me, old man.”

He thinks he can hear Luke chuckle when another violent strike just misses him. “Aren’t I?”

“You’re _running!_ ” Ben swings, and swings, and swings. “Coward!” He and Kylo mirror each other’s frustration, each blow gaining in speed and power until Ben is rocked back by the sheer force of the work. 

Luke watches him impassively from the street. 

Ben thrusts forward. As Luke steps aside, impossibly fast, Kylo dissolves the blade, his coil snapping out lighting quick to wrap the old man’s neck-

He intercepts nothing. The tentacle slides through air where Luke’s throat should be.

Ben hisses. He strides forward and Luke does not back away. He puts his hand through Luke’s cheek.

Nothing. There’s nothing there.

Luke smiles. 

“You’re. Still. Hiding,” Ben growls, furious.

“Perhaps you aren’t worth my time to fight,” Luke says lightly. It’s a sharp jab, coming from him. Ben would throttle the image if he could, instead he sends his Sithen tearing into the street, sending rock and cobblestone flying. 

Luke watches the tantrum impassively. Ben has a distant memory of this happening before, himself much younger, rocks being flung into the ocean while Luke told him to get ahold of himself. Of course, he didn’t have the Sithen then.

It’s only when his energy is spent and he’s panting with the effort of destroying half the road that Ben realizes Luke’s game. His black-tinted eyes snap up. “You’re a distraction.”

“You’re slipping,” Luke says in response. 

Ben turns and stalks back toward the boarding house. “We aren’t done,” he calls over his shoulder.

“You know where you can find me,” Luke says, his body vanishing before the words are all out.

***

Finn has crept up to the boarding house alone, a crowbar in hand. Rey is as close as she can be without being in Snoke’s radius, but it will be up to Finn to retrieve Poe and get him to her. The coal chute is easy to locate and blessedly unlocked, but it will be a narrow fit for him- still, he eases one leg in and taps one foot against the grate inside, which is better secured. “Poe?” he calls quietly. No response. He frowns and drops his weight against the lower grate with a hard stomp. It strains, metal creaking against brick. He raises his legs and stomps again. Something pops.

One more and the grate pops. He slides through, ash and cobwebs spreading everywhere in a puff of dust. He can just make out a pair of shoes in the dim light coming through the hole. “Poe?” he whispers again. He sees the shoes shift in response.

“Shh,” he hears Poe breathe.

Finn listens. There are footsteps outside, circling around beyond the door to this little room, treading like they’re going up or down stairs. Finn creeps over to Poe, relieved and grateful as his hand finds him in the dark. Poe’s hand closes on his own and gives him a squeeze, Finn can hear a shink of metal as he shifts. He lets his fingers find them and follows them to the place they are hooked onto the wall. He bends back down to breathe in Poe’s ear. “If I break this, can you get up the chute.”

“Maybe. My legs are fine.”

“Arms?”

“Not as good.” 

Finn feels a flash of anger that Poe has been mistreated and wants, badly, to go right out the door and bludgeon anyone responsible for this with his crowbar. But he needs to get Poe out first. “Okay. Get ready to move.” 

Steps approach the door. Finn can hear the rattle of keys. He’s out of time. He leverages the crowbar against the chain and wrenches it off the wall with a harsh grunt. “Okay, you first, go-” he hauls up Poe by his shirt and kisses him briefly on the cheek as he ushers him to the chute. 

The key turns in the door. 

Finn pushes Poe up and into the chute, shoving his legs in. He gets the crowbar back in his hand as the door opens. The woman is a monstrously tall blonde with strangely vacant eyes. 

She’s holding a very wide steel shovel. When her eyes find him she lifts it and steps toward him, swinging it so hard that when he dives out of the way and it strikes brick it sends the shattered remains of stone flying out in a dusty mess. 

Finn wishes he had a revolver with him. “Keep moving, Poe!” he calls up the chute. He kicks her in the hip, but she doesn’t topple, instead spinning the shovel and whacking him with the broad side in the back. _Fucking hell, she swings it like a halberd._ He cuts low with the crowbar and smacks her in the back of her knee, forcing her to drop that knee to the floor. She jabs forward with the shovel and sends a shock of pain through his arm where she connects, but he’s already carving back through the air with the crowbar.

He connects with her temple, sending her reeling to the ground. Somehow it doesn’t knock her out, but he doesn’t have time to stick around and finish the job. She’s dazed, it will have to be enough. 

Finn dives for the coal chute. He scrabbles and claws and just feels the miss of her hand reaching after his foot.

Poe is at the top, clutching himself, bruised and bloodied, but his eyes hold the same mischievous glint that lets Finn know Poe is okay. “Alright?” Poe asks him. 

Finn grabs his hand, glancing back toward the chute. He’s not sure if the woman is too large to fit through it or not. “We’ve got to move, love. Can you run?”

“Anything for you. My hero.” 

Finn rolls his eyes. He’s flirting. Again.

“The hero will request payment later. For now, run.”

***

Hux is pouring another tea when he finds himself suddenly shaking like someone has grasped him bodily, scattering droplets to the floor. “Blast- what on earth….?” The shards of kyber on his workbench make a tinny, ringing sound, compelling his attention. He marches toward them, picks one up, and feels the ringing sound inside his own head, oppressive and demanding.

His work is needed. _Now._

He rushes to make the last few adjustments. No time for tests, he just has to hope it won’t explode on him. He’ll put the final pieces together when he arrives, just before it is required. That way he won’t risk the device in transit.

A duffel bag stuffed in a storage closet will have to do. He carefully starts loading it with his large silver orb.

He is so focused on the task at hand that he doesn’t see a concerned face near the window, running off when he starts to pack. 

Hux walks briskly back to the boarding house, a steady buzz in his ear. There is some manner of commotion a street over, two men and a woman running as though their lives depended on it, but he doesn’t have time to investigate.

He is needed.

Ben intercepts him before he even reaches the boarding house. “Productive day?”

“Oh yes!” Hux cannot stop to talk. He must get the weapon upstairs. Ben looks disappointed when he marches past, but Hux… Hux cannot physically stop. 

Something in his mind registers alarm. Why are his legs moving without him?

Ben follows him up the steps and right into Ben’s room, which is also odd, as… as… 

Hux looks at the crystal. 

_It is time, Armitage._

His body moves on its own accord as he puts the pieces together. A simple click, a twist of a screw, and all is in place. As he moves, his mind is starting to panic. The crystal spoke to him. Didn’t it? Or is Hux finally losing his mind, his long-ago shell-shock seeping through?

He turns on the weapon, all the alarms in his body going off. This is untested, dangerous, he’ll be lucky if it doesn’t blow them all up-

Ben lays a calming hand across his shoulder. His eyes are so sad. Hux wants to ask him why but finds he cannot speak.

The weapon is a precise line of red. He feels the crystal guiding him, telling him how to aim it. How to cut through barriers he cannot even see. As the crystal comes undone, the thing within it- the carving, Ben’s carving- moves. It unfurls into the shape of a man, misshapen and deformed. Long fingers claw their way into the waning light. 

“Much better,” the figure says. Hux feels the spherical weapon being lifted out of his hands and drawn to the creature, who strokes it reverently. “Thank you Armitage. Your purpose has been served.”

Hux feels a rush of air as he suddenly goes flying, slamming into the wall hard enough that he sees stars. He hears Ben call his name, then everything goes dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was super hard to write for some reason. Hopefully the rest will not be as difficult- I am expecting this to be around 10 chapters at this time.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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